“I suppose you’ve seen her,” she said, and gave utterance to an emotional little titter that quickly stopped his whistling.
He had heard such semblances of amusement from her often enough to understand their prophetic meaning. “In for it again!” was instantly his thought. “Seen her?” he said. “Who do you mean?”
“Your fair mountain range,” Lena replied, affecting a light mockery. “Of course you didn’t know she’s home again! Innocent old Dannie!”
“I heard she was to get here to-day, so I suppose she’s here; but I haven’t seen her. What about it?”
“Oh, nothing!” Lena returned, continuing her archness. “Do you suppose she can stand it?”
“Stand what?”
“Why, the sight of us — of her old sweetheart married to me,” Lena explained. “She’s stayed away till she thought she could bear it, but do you suppose she will be able to?”
“Yes, I think she’ll bear it,” he said gruffly and went on with his lathering.
“How about you? Do you think you’ll be able to contain yourself when you — —”
“I expect so.”
“Why don’t you ask me how she looks?” Lena inquired, still affecting to rally him gaily. “I know you’re dying to. I’ve seen her; I was looking from my window and saw her go out and walk up the street this afternoon. I laughed so!”
“What about?”
“She was such a perfect picture of a big Western woman! Absolutely typical!”
“You mean like mother, for instance?”
“No; your mother’s a dear thing who’d be lovely anywhere; I never think of her as Western at all,” Lena said. “She isn’t.”
“She is as much as Martha is — or anybody else. She was born here and — —”
“Not at all!” Lena interrupted airily. “The real Western woman is like your mountain girl. They love to be huge; that’s why they live in the prairie country — so they’ll look even bigger. One reason I laughed was because your friend was just exactly as much the typical Western woman after all this time abroad as she was before she went. She was wearing all kinds of expensive clothes, and I haven’t a doubt she’d got them in Paris, but on her they looked perfectly as Western as if she’d just bought ’em and put ’em on downtown at Kohn & Sons! Do you suppose you’ll be able to control your raptures at all when you meet her again, old innocent Dannie?”
“See here,” he said, “I wish you’d let me get fixed for dinner. I had a pretty hot day’s work and I’d like to — —”
“Of course you would!” Lena said. “You’d like to make yourself beautiful because you’re going to hurry over there to her just as soon as you’ve finished your dinner, aren’t you? That’s what you have been planning, isn’t it?”
“Why, yes; certainly,” he answered. “I’d like to have you go with me. She’s an old friend of mine and all our family; she’s been away a long time, and it wouldn’t look very cordial not to — —”
“Why, no; so it wouldn’t!” Lena mocked, but now her mockery was openly acrid. “It wouldn’t look cordial and naturally you’d hate to have her think you lacked cordiality — a woman you were so cordial with you wanted your child to grow up to be like her instead of like its mother! — a woman you were so cordial with you had to hold her hand the very day you brought your bride home! It would be terrible to have her think — —”
But here Dan closed the door, though not so sharply as Lena closed the outer door of his bedroom when she went out of it an instant later.
The subject of Martha’s return was not again mentioned directly during the evening; and after dinner, when Lena with arch significance inquired of her silent husband why he had settled down at the library table to write business letters when there was “so much to do in the neighbourhood,” Dan replied, without looking up, that his letters were important — he’d have to beg to be excused from talking. Lena picked up a book, and retired to the easy-chair and the lamp in the bay window, which had once been Harlan’s favourite reading place; but she did not read. She sat looking steadily at her husband — as he thoroughly and uncomfortably understood, though he kept doggedly at his writing.
After a time his mother and father were heard in the hall, going out; and he knew that they were “going over next door” to bid Martha welcome home. They had not mentioned where they were going, and he understood the significance of their not mentioning it — and so did Lena, as she sat watching him. He wondered why he did not rise and say to her: “There’s an old friend of mine next door; I haven’t seen her for years; I ought to go over and tell her I’m glad she’s home, and I want to! There’s no reason I shouldn’t, and you can make the most of it — I’m going!”
Lena had her own wonderings. She wondered why she was keeping her husband from going. Her thought was that she ought to say: “I don’t think I care for you enough any more to have a right to be jealous. Go to your old friend and tell her you’re glad she’s home again, since you wish to. I’m not so small about it as I’m making you think, and I really don’t care.”
Lena wondered why she did not say this to her husband; — in a manner she wanted to say it, and at the same time she knew that she would say nothing of the kind, but on the contrary, intended to keep him in fear of what she might do if he made any effort to appear “cordial,” as he had said, to Martha. Thus the husband and wife sat — the husband bent over his writing and the wife looking at him, her book in her lap. When she looked away from him it was not to the book that her gaze went, but to the wall across the room, where she saw nothing to please her; and when she had looked at the wall for a time she always looked again at Dan. His own eyes were kept to the writing upon the table, yet he must have been conscious of hers when they were upon him, for a deeper frown came upon his forehead whenever she looked away from the wall and again at him.
After a while Mr. and Mrs. Oliphant were heard returning, and in the library it somehow seemed strange, and like an event out of nature’s order, to hear such brisk and cheerful sounds, when the front door opened, letting in the two voices and their owners simultaneously.
“Indeed she is!” Mrs. Oliphant was heard to say, while her husband continued a narrative evidently begun outside.
“And I told her so. I said, ‘By George, if an old maid’s a person who just gets lovelier and lovelier, Martha, why, then, maybe you’re — —’”
But here his voice so abruptly dropped to a mumble no one could have doubted that the suppression was in obedience to a tactful gesture of his wife’s; nor was it difficult to picture this gesture as a movement of Mrs. Oliphant’s hand toward the open door of the library. Immediately afterward the two were heard ascending the stairs; the house again became as quiet as before; Dan went on with his writing, and Lena with her looking and wondering.
Often such a vigil between husband and wife does not end by leaving things as they were before it began. Between the two silent people appear to have taken place communications so imperceptible that neither is definitely aware of them, yet each may be affected by them as if by words spoken. It would seem that there is a danger here; for with couples not well wedded the unspoken words may be too true, or may carry altogether too much revelation. Lena stopped wondering; and then rather slowly it became clear to her that she and her husband no longer cared for each other at all. Long, long she had clung to her belief that she was still in love with him; and now all she had left to her of this was that she could still be jealous of him. “A fine reason for not leaving a man!” she said to herself; — especially a man who really cared about nothing but his business and his boy!
Suddenly she rose from her chair, the book in her lap falling to the floor, where she let it remain; and then she stood still, while Dan glanced up inquiringly from his work and met the strange, examining, hostile look she gave him.
There was a final moment of silence between them before Lena hurried across the room and left him. A minute later Dan rubbed his forehead, wondering again. U
pstairs, Lena had not slammed her door.
He had an absent-minded impression that something had happened, but as its nature seemed indefinite, and he had now become more interested in his letters than in Martha’s return or Lena’s temper, he bent again to his work and kept at it with zest until after midnight.
Chapter XXI
DAN DID NOT go next day to bid the returned neighbour welcome home — he thought it better to postpone the call of greeting he should have made at once. He knew he should have made it, if even out of no more than mere neighbourliness; but gradually it became postponed into the indefiniteness that means never, a postponement not without parallel when old friends of husbands return. Meanwhile, Martha was not again mentioned by either Lena or her husband; though this is only to say that she was not orally mentioned between them, but continued to be the subject of their silences. Dan did not dare to go to see her; and his own silence, when he was with his wife, was doggedly protestive, while Lena’s was inscrutable, though she sometimes gave him evidences of a faintly amused contempt. She permitted him to perceive that she despised him, but not to understand whether she despised him because he wanted to see Martha or because he was afraid to do what he wanted.
Once or twice, when he came from his long day’s work, he caught a glimpse of a white figure in the twilight of the Shelbys’ veranda, and waved his hat, and thought a hand waved to him in return; but weeks passed and limp midsummer was almost upon the town before he had speech again with the slighted lady, though the slight was always upon his conscience.
Upon a hot Sunday noon, when his father and mother returned from church, he took them to see the “carpenter shop” he had spent the morning making in the old summer-house for young Henry — Henry Daniel no longer, at the boy’s own vehement request. The grandparents praised the “carpenter shop” but chided their son for staying away from church to construct it, and their grandson for missing Sunday-school. Dan laughed; he had not been to church in a year; and Henry distorted the cherubic rotundities of his small face into as much ferocity as he could accomplish. “I hate Sunday-school,” he declared; and, as his mother joined them just then, he seized her hand. “I don’t haf to go ‘lessen I want to. You’ll never get me in that ole hole again!”
“My gracious!” Dan laughed. “It isn’t as bad as all that. You and I might decide to begin goin’ again sometime, Henry.”
“I won’t,” Henry said stoutly, and as the group moved across the lawn, returning toward the house, he clung to his mother’s hand and repeated that he didn’t “haf to.” He appealed to Lena piercingly: “I don’t haf to if I don’t want to, do I, mamma?”
“Why, no,” his father assured him. “Of course you don’t. It wouldn’t do you much good, I expect, if you don’t like it. You needn’t fret, Henry. I guess you’ll be a good enough boy without Sunday-school.”
“I expect so, maybe,” Mr. Oliphant agreed, chuckling at his grandson’s vehemence. “It’s a good thing your grandmother Savage can’t hear you, though, Dan. I never did know what she really believed; in fact, I rather suspect she was an agnostic in her heart — but she’d have been shocked to hear you letting your offspring out of Sunday-school — or anything else — merely because he doesn’t like it.”
“I expect she would, sir,” Dan said. “But all that’s changed since her day. People don’t believe in — —” He stopped speaking and moving simultaneously, and stood staring out at the sidewalk where his brother and Martha Shelby, walking slowly, were returning from church.
“People don’t believe in what?” Mr. Oliphant inquired, stopping also.
“I — I don’t know, sir,” Dan said vaguely, and he began to grow red. Harlan and Martha had turned in at the gate and were coming across the lawn to them.
Martha went first to Lena. “I haven’t had a chance to say ‘Howdy-do’ to you since I came back,” she said easily. “I’m ever so glad to see you again.” Then she turned to Dan, and gave him her hand with a cordial emphasis of gesture. “It’s fine to see you again, too, Dan. I want to congratulate you about Ornaby Addition. You’ll have to look out, though.”
“I will?” Dan said and added awkwardly, “Well — well, the — the truth is, I’m mighty glad to see you. I mean we’re all glad you’re back home again, Martha.” He was visibly in a state of that almost certain contagion, embarrassment, and so flounderingly that he was embarrassing. He dropped Martha’s cordial hand almost as soon as he touched it, and at the same instant turned upon his wife a look of helpless apprehension that would have revealed everything, if revelation were needed. But Lena showed herself as little disconcerted as the steady Martha was; and the look she sent back to her husband held in it something of the hostile examination that had come into her eyes on the evening after Martha’s return, though now it was accompanied by a bright glint almost hilariously jeering. It was strikingly successful in effect. Dan gulped, then he stammered: “How — how do you — how do you mean I must look out, Martha?”
She laughed cheerfully. “I mean you must look out for some of those wicked old men downtown. You tried to get them to come in with you at the start, but they wouldn’t, and pretty soon they’re going to be furious that they let the chance slip. They’ll try to get Ornaby away from you, Dan.” She turned to the little boy, who had been silenced for a moment by the arrival of this stranger. “I ought to know you,” she said. “That’s why I stopped on my way home: I wanted to meet you. I live next door. Will you shake hands?”
“No,” Henry replied, because his momentary shyness had passed and he felt that this refusal would help to restore the conspicuousness he had been enjoying as the owner of a new “carpenter shop” and a rebel against Sunday-school. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to shake hands.”
“Why, Henry dear!” Mrs. Oliphant intervened, touching her grandson lightly upon the shoulder. “You don’t mean that! This is our dear friend that lives next door and likes little boys. You must — —”
“I won’t!” Henry shouted. “I don’t care who she likes, I don’t want to shake hands.” He intended no discourtesy; he merely wished to be distinguished, and in continuance of that desire immediately doubled himself, placing the top of his head upon the ground. “I can turn a summerset,” he said. “Want to see me do it? Watch me! Look!”
He failed to accomplish the proposed feat, but at once attempted it again. “Watch me!” he shouted. “Look at me! Why don’t you watch me?”
He went on with his attempts, more and more shrilly demanding the public attention that had wandered from him. Martha had begun to talk to Mrs. Oliphant; and Lena came close to Harlan for a moment. “Didn’t leave her accent in Italy!” she murmured in her little voice; and passed on toward the house, displaying daintily upon the short grass pretty white slippers that a girl of twelve might have worn.
Harlan shrugged his shoulders, and his thought was, “Parisian doll!” as it usually was when his sister-in-law irritated him. Certainly, if there were a Parisienne present it was Lena and not the unchanging Martha in her Paris clothes.
The little boy shouted louder and louder, since attention was still denied him; — he tugged at his father’s coat, wailing shrilly, “Look at me, papa! Oh, my goodness, can’t you watch me?”
Meanwhile Martha, beaming down upon Mrs. Oliphant, nevertheless sent an impersonal glance over that amiable lady’s head to where the child thus besieged his father, who seemed to be in a temporary stupor. Dan looked much older, Martha thought, than when she had gone away; and, though she had not expected him to retain for ever an unlined face and his fine figure, she felt a little dismay at finding him settling into what was strikingly like middle-age. He was older and heavier than he need have been, she thought, and a stranger might well have guessed Harlan to be ten years the younger of the two.
Nowhere in Dan, with his broadened, preoccupied, and lined face, his heavy, careless figure and his middle-aged careless clothes, could she discover the jolly boy she had known, or the youth she had dance
d with in college holidays, or the jaunty young man so dashingly clad who had come home from New York engaged to be married, and told her so on a February walk she would always remember. What was more to her, nowhere in this almost middle-aged man of business, now beginning to be successful, could she discover signs of the spirit that once would have brought him instantly to welcome home an old friend, even if a wife did threaten. Yet he was a man who would have swept Lena aside if she had attempted to interfere with his business, Martha thought — and it was not a thought that made her happier. She moved to depart.
But at this, the insistent Henry, irritated beyond measure by the general indifference to his acrobatics, flung himself upon her, pulling fiercely at her dress. “My goodnuss! Can’t you watch me? What’s the matter with you? You got to watch me!”
There was a sound of tearing as he pulled at her; — Mr. Oliphant sprang to him and removed him, but Martha picked up the lace flounce partly torn from her skirt, and laughed at the mutilation of her finery. “No harm at all,” she said, as both Mr. and Mrs. Oliphant began to apologize for Henry; but their apologies and her reassurances were not distinctly audible; nor were her words of departure as she turned toward the gate with Harlan. Henry had instantly squirmed from his grandfather’s grasp and was shriller and louder than ever.
“Now I guess you’ll watch me!” he shrieked. “Look at me, gran’pa! Look at me, everybody!” He appealed also to his mother, who had paused near the front steps and stood there, laughing. “Look at me, mamma! Watch me, now! I’m goin’ to turn a summerset!” He charged into his father’s legs, yelling, “You’re not lookin’ at me, papa! My goodnuss! Can’t you watch me?” And he continued to be overwhelmingly vociferous, but Dan, for the moment, paid no attention.
He was wondering how it had happened that Martha had been so long at home and he had not taken the few steps — just to next door — to tell her he was glad she had come back. What if Lena had made a fuss? It would have been right to go. And there came to him faintly, faintly, the ghost of a recollection of a starry night when he and Martha stood not far from where they were now in this glaring noon. It had strangely seemed to him then that he had had a gift from her, something made of no earthly stuff, something enriching and ineffable. He had forgotten it; but now he remembered, and at the very moment of remembering, it seemed to him that the gift was gone.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 352