“Hobart!” Anne cried, and her voice was free and loud, “Hobart Simms!”
“Yes?” he said, inquiringly, not comprehending the vehemence of her exclamation.
Anne did not respond at once. Instead, she sat staring at him, and her mother marked how a small glow of red came into the daughter’s cheek. Then Mrs. Cromwell also stared at little Hobart Simms; and for the first time noticed what a good profile he had and what a well-shaped head. Slowly and wonderingly the daughter’s eyes turned to meet the mother’s, and each caught the marvel of the other’s thought: that it was this unconsidered little Hobart Simms who fitted Mrs. Cromwell’s definition of a “superman.”
“Why, yes,” Anne said, slowly. “If you really care to go for a walk, I’d like to go with you, Hobart.”
Mrs. Cromwell watched them as they went forth, outwardly the most ill-assorted couple in her sight that day; for Hobart was a full “head” the shorter. They talked amiably together as they went, however, and Mrs. Cromwell’s heart was lightened by the sound of Anne’s laughter, which came back to her even when the two had gone but a little distance.
The mother’s heart might have known less relief, that afternoon, had she suspected this walk to be the beginning of “anything serious.” And yet, had she been a good soothsayer and seeress she might well have been pleased; for not many years were to pass before Hobart Simms’s electrified fellow citizens were to remind one another frequently that Napoleon was a little man, too.
VIII. MRS. DODGE’S ONLY DAUGHTER
THAT CAPABLE AND unsentimental matron, Mrs. Dodge, was engaged in the composition of an essay for the Woman’s Saturday Club (founded 1882) and the subject that had been assigned to her was “Spiritual Life and the New Generation.” Her work upon it moved slowly because the flow of her philosophical thinking met constant interference, due to an anxiety of her own connected with the New Generation, though emphatically not (in her opinion) with its Spiritual Life. Anxiety always makes philosophy difficult; but she sat resolutely at her desk whenever her apprehensions and her general household duties permitted; and she was thus engaged upon a springtime morning a week before her “paper” was to be presented for the club’s consideration.
She wrote quotations from Ruskin, Whitman, Carlyle, and Schopenhauer, muttering pleasantly to herself that the essay was “beginning to sound right well”; but, unfortunately for literature, the window beside her desk looked down upon the street. Nothing in the mild activities of “the finest suburb’s finest residential boulevard” should have stopped an essay, and yet a most commonplace appearance there stopped Mrs. Dodge’s. Her glance, having wandered to the window, became fixed in a widely staring incredulity; then rapidly narrowed into most poignant distaste. She dropped her pen, and from her parted lips there came an outcry eloquent of horror.
Yet what she saw was only a snub-nosed boy shambling up the brick path to her front door, walking awkwardly, and obviously in a state of embarrassment.
At the same moment Mrs. Dodge’s only daughter, Lily, aged eighteen, standing at a window of the drawing-room downstairs, looked forth upon precisely the same scene; but discovered no boy at all upon the brick path. Where her mother saw a snubnosed boy shambling, Lily beheld a knight of Arthur’s court, bright as the sun and of such grace that he came toward the house like a bird gliding in a suave curve before it lights. Merlin wafted him; she had no consciousness that feet carried him; no consciousness that he wore feet at all. She knew only that this divine bird of hers was coming nearer and nearer to her, while her heart melted within her.
Then, investing him with proper human feet for the purpose of her desire, she wanted to throw herself down before the door, so that he would step upon her as he entered. But, instead, she ran to admit him, and, gasping, took him by the hand, led him into the drawing-room, moaned, and cast herself upon his bosom, weeping.
“They want to separate us!” she sobbed. “Forever! But you have come to me!”
Upstairs, her mother set a paper-weight upon the manuscript of “Spiritual Life and the New Generation,” realizing at once that emotional conflict was to occupy her for the next hour or so, if not longer. She descended fiercely to the drawing-room, where the caller, rosy as fire, removed his arm from Lily’s waist, and would have stepped away from her. But Lily moaned, “No!” and clung to him.
“Stand away from my daughter!” Mrs. Dodge said. “Explain what you mean by daring to come here.”
“I — I want to,” he stammered. “That’s just what I — it’s what I came for. I — I want to—”
But Mrs. Dodge interrupted him. “Did you understand me? I said, ‘Stand away from my daughter!’”
“I would,” he said, deferentially. “I would, but — but—”
He was unable to explain in words a difficulty that was too evident without them: the clinging Lily resisted his effort to detach himself, and it was clear that in order to obey her mother’s command he would need assistance. This, however, was immediately forthcoming.
“Lily!” Mrs. Dodge rushed upon her; but Lily clung only the more tragically.
“No, no!” she moaned. “This is my place and it is my right!”
Mrs. Dodge set really violent hands upon her, and unmistakably there hovered a possibility, in the imminent future, that Lily would not only be removed from her lover but would also get a shaking. Rather than be seen under such undignified circumstances, she succumbed upon a sofa, weeping there. “You see,” she wailed; “you see how they treat me!”
“Now, before you march out of here,” her mother said to the intruder, “you explain how you dared to come.”
“Well, that’s what I came for,” he responded. “I wanted to explain.”
“You make it perfectly clear in one stroke,” Mrs. Dodge said. “You came here to explain why you came here!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Brilliant!” she cried. “But I hadn’t looked for better. I think you may trouble yourself to take your instant departure, Mr. Oswald Osborne!”
As she pronounced this name, which she did with oppressive distinctness, the young man winced as at the twinge of an old wound reopened. “I don’t think that’s fair,” he said, plaintively.
“It isn’t ‘fair’ for me to choose whom I care to see in my own house?” Mrs. Dodge inquired with perfect hypocrisy, for she knew what he meant.
“I’m talking about ‘Oswald’,” he explained. “I can’t help my name, and I don’t think it’s fair to taunt me with it. My parents did have me christened ‘Oswald,’ I admit; but they were sorry when I got older and they saw how I felt about it and what it would do to me. You know as well as I do, Mrs.
Dodge, I’ve struggled pretty long to get people to quit calling me ‘Oswald,’ and almost everybody calls me Crabbe now. It isn’t a very good middle name, but anyhow it’s better than—”
“Good heavens!” Mrs. Dodge interrupted. “Are you going to stand here all morning talking about your name? I’m afraid you overlook the circumstance that you’ve been requested to leave my house.”
“I know it,” he said, apologetically. “But it really isn’t fair to call me ‘Oswald’ any more, when practically nobody else does, and that’s what threw me off. What I came here for, I had to see Lily.”
“I had to see you!” Lily cried from the sofa. “If I hadn’t, I should have died!” And at a scornful look from her mother, she passionately insisted upon the accuracy of this view. “Oh, yes, I should, Mamma! You don’t know what you and Papa have been putting me through! You don’t know what it does to me! You don’t know what it’s making me suffer! You don’t understand!”
“I understand too much, unfortunately,” the mother retorted. “I understand that you’ve got yourself into such a hysterical state over a young man who couldn’t possibly buy a pair of shoes for you — or for himself! — and that your father and I daren’t let you step out of the house alone for fear you’ll try to run away with him again.”
Young Mr. Os
borne protested with some heat. “Why, I’m not barefooted, Mrs. Dodge!” he said. “What I came here to say this morning is right on the point you’re discussing. You and Mr. Dodge haven’t once been fair to me during the whole trouble we’ve had about this matter, and when you say I couldn’t even give Lily a pair of shoes—”
“Could you?” Mrs. Dodge inquired, breathing deeply. “Am I misinformed by my husband? I seem to recall he told me that when you and Lily were eloping last week — in a borrowed car — he overtook you at a refilling station, where she was offering her watch and rings for gasoline.”
“I didn’t ask her to,” Crabbe Osborne said, flushing deeper. “I admit she offered ’em, but I was arguing about it with her when Mr. Dodge got there. Anyhow, the gas man wouldn’t take ’em.”
“Oh, he should have!” Lily moaned. “Then we wouldn’t have all this to go through. We’d have been out of it all. We’d have been together for always!”
“Would you?” her mother asked, with a hard laugh. “Just how would you have obtained a marriage license, since there weren’t enough funds for gasoline?”
“I had that all thought out,” the young man replied. “We were going to stop and get married at Saline. I’ve got a cousin living in Saline, and I could have borrowed as much as we needed from him. He’d have trusted me, because he knows I’d pay him back.”
“And would you?” Mrs. Dodge inquired.
This brought a protest from both of the afflicted lovers. Young Mr. Osborne said, “Oh, look here, Mrs. Dodge,” and swallowed, but Lily made a real outcry. She sprang up, facing her mother angrily.
“Shame!” she cried. “You taunt him with his poverty! Has he ever pretended for one moment to be a rich man? If he had, there might be some point to your taunts, but you know he hasn’t. From the very first I defy you to say he hasn’t been absolutely frank about it! I do, Mamma! I defy you to say so!”
“Sit down,” said her mother.
“‘Sit down?’ I won’t, Mamma; I won’t sit down! Indeed, I won’t, and you haven’t any right to make me! You and Papa order me to do this; you order me to do that; you order me to do everything; but the time’s past when I obeyed you like a Myrmidon. I don’t trust your wisdom any more, Mamma; nor Papa’s, either — not since you’ve tried to keep me an absolute prisoner and won’t let Crabbe even step inside the yard!”
“‘Inside the yard?’” Mrs. Dodge said. “It strikes me he’s rather farther than that.” She turned upon the perplexed young man. “How many times do you usually have to be requested to leave a house?”
“Why, I expect to go,” he responded, feebly. “I do expect to go, Mrs. Dodge. I think I have a right to explain, though, and if you’d just listen a minute—”
“Very well. I’ll give you a minute.”
“It’s like this,” he said. “I know you and Mr.
Dodge object to me as — as a son-in-law—”
“We do, indeed!”
“Well, you see,” he went on, “that’s just the injustice of it. I’m twenty-two-and-a-half years old, and while I admit I’ve had considerable trouble in some of the positions I’ve filled in a business way, why, you can’t expect hard luck to keep on being against me forever. It’s bound to turn, Mrs. Dodge. Luck doesn’t always run just one way, not by any means. My own father said last night he wouldn’t be surprised if I’d get hold of something pretty soon that would interest me so much I’d do mighty well at it. Well, he’s been prejudiced against me a good long while now and I thought if he had faith in me to say as much as that, it was certainly time for other people to begin to show a little faith in me, too. What I came here for this morning, Mrs. Dodge, was to tell Lily about my father saying that to me. I thought she ought to know about it. You see, Father speaking that way started me to thinking, and I’ve realized with the positions I’ve held so far I couldn’t get myself interested in the work. That’s just exactly what’s been the main difficulty. So I wanted to tell Lily I’ve made up my mind I’m going to look for a position where the work will interest me. I thought if she knew I’d taken this stand on the question—”
“Excuse me,” Mrs. Dodge interrupted, “I believe the minute I agreed to listen is up. I must remind you of my request to leave this house.”
“Well—” he said, uncertainly, “if you put it like that—”
“I do, if you please.”
“Well—” he said, again, and took a step toward the door, but was detained by Lily, who made an impassioned effort to reach him in spite of the fact that her large and solid mother instantly placed herself between them.
“You sha’n’t go!” Lily cried. “If you do, I’ll go with you. I’ll die if you leave me! I will, Mamma!”
“Stop that!” Mrs. Dodge commanded, and again found herself in the predicament of a lady who is compelled to use force. Lily struggled, and, unable to pass, looked agony upon her lover, wept at him over her mother’s shoulder, and also extended an imploring arm and hand toward him above this same impediment.
“You mustn’t leave me!” she begged, hoarsely. “I can’t stand it! Take me away with you!” And to this she added a word that her mother found incredible, even though Mrs. Dodge had been through some amazing scenes lately, and thought the utmost of Lily’s extravagance already within her experience. Yet the mother might have been wiser here, might have understood that for a girl of Lily’s emotional disposition, and in Lily’s condition of tragic love, no limits whatever may be set.
To Lily herself the word she used was not extravagant at all; it was merely her definition of Crabbe Osborne. As he went toward the door Lily saw a brightness moving with him, an effulgence that would depart with him and leave but darkness when he had passed the threshold. No doubt the true being of young Crabbe was neither as Mrs. Dodge conceived it nor as Lily saw it; — no earthly intellect could have defined just what he was: nor, for that matter, can any earthly intellect say what anything is, since all of our descriptive words express nothing more than how the things appear to ourselves; and our descriptions, therefore, are all but bits of autobiography. Thus, Lily’s word really expressed not Crabbe but her own condition, and that was what shocked her mother. Yet Lily sincerely believed that the word described Crabbe; and, in her opinion, since her lover’s effulgence was divine, this word was natural, moderate, and peculiarly accurate.
“Take me away with you,” she wailed; and then, in a voice beset with tears, she hoarsely called him, “Angel”!
“Oh, murder!” cried Mrs. Dodge. And she was inspired to turn upon Crabbe Osborne a look that expressed in full her critical thought of Lily’s term for him.
Unquestionably he found himself in difficulties. Called “angel” in the presence of a third party, he may have been hampered by some sense of personal inadequacy. He produced a few sounds in his throat, but nothing in the way of appropriate response; and under the circumstances the expression of Mrs. Dodge was not long to be endured by any merely human being.
“I guess maybe — maybe I better be stepping along,” he murmured, and acted upon the supposition that his guess was a correct one.
Lily cried, “No! Don’t leave me!” And piteously she used her strange word for him again; but her mother held her fast until after the closing of the front door was heard. “Oh, Heaven!” Lily wailed, “won’t you even let me go and watch him till he’s out of sight? Won’t you even let me look at him?”
“No, I won’t!”
Upon this the daughter slid downward from the mother’s grasp and cast herself upon the floor. “He’s gone!” she sobbed. “Oh, he’s gone! He’s gone, and you drove him out! You drove him! You did! You drove him!”
“Get up from there,” Mrs. Dodge said, fiercely. Be quiet! Do you want the servants to hear you?”
“What do I care who hears me? You drove him! You drove him, Mamma! You did! You drove him!”
IX. MRS. DODGE’S HUSBAND
SPIRITUAL LIFE AND the New Generation” lay meekly upon Mrs. Dodge’s desk for all t
he rest of that day, and nothing was added to it. Late in the afternoon Lily consented to take a little beef tea and toast in her room; but she was still uttering intermittent gurgles, like sobs too exhausted for a fuller expression, when her mother brought her tray to her — or perhaps Lily merely renewed the utterance of these sounds at sight of her mother — and all in all the latter had what she called “a day indeed of it!”
So she told Mr. Dodge upon his arrival from his office that evening. “Haven’t I, though!” she added, and gave him so vivid an account that, although he was tired, he got up from his easy chair and paced the floor.
“It comes back to the same old, everlasting question,” he said, when she had concluded. “What does she see in him? What on earth makes her act like that over this moron? There’s the question I don’t believe anybody can answer. She’s always been a fanciful, imaginative girl, but until this thing came over her she appeared to be fairly close to normal. Of course, I supposed she’d fall in love some day, but I thought she’d have a few remnants of reason left when she did. I’ve heard of girls that acted like this, but not many; and I never dreamed ours would be one of that sort. I’d like to know what other parents have done who’ve had daughters get into this state over some absolutely worthless cub like Crabbe Osborne.”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Dodge said, helplessly. “I’d ask ’em if I did. I’m sure I’m at my wits’ end about it.”
“We both are. I admit I haven’t the faintest idea how to do anything more intelligent than we’ve been doing — and yet I see where it’s going to end.”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 366