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.
“Why haven’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? You wanted a quarrel to justify your going, so that the real reason wouldn’t be suspected. You’d seen that singing beef again, and you meant to see him again — 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 — it isn’t a 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 stand that long.”
“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 da
y 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 any meaning in 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 he is smashed, 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 he did get 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 actually done was 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 fall off — not until that little Jew friend of his came to me the other morning and made me 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 ever got anywhere 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. It would have 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 just got to 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 with you, 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, you always 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.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 359