“Hurrah for you!” she cried, laughing at him again. “Why, you already talk like a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Dan.”
“How’s that?”
“Oh, you know the speeches they make: ‘A city of prosperity, a city of homes, a city that produces more wooden butter-dishes than all the rest of the country combined! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the finest city with the biggest future in the whole extent of these United States!’”
Dan laughed, but there came into his eyes a glint of enthusiasm that was wholly serious. “Well, I believe they’re not so far wrong, at that. In some ways I think myself it is about the finest city in the country. It kind of came over me when I got off the train yesterday and drove up home through these broad old streets with the big trees and big houses. It’s when you’ve been away a good while that you find out how you appreciate it when you get back. Harlan’s just the other way; he says when he’s been away and gets back, the place looks squalid to him. ‘Squalid’ was what he said. He makes me tired!”
“Does he?”
“Yes; when he talks like that, he does,” Dan answered. “Why, the people you see on the streets here, they’ve all got time enough and interest enough in each other to stop and shake hands and ask about each other’s families, and they’re mighty nice, intelligent-looking people, too. In New York everybody hurries by; they don’t know each other anyway, of course; and if you get off Broadway and Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, and one or two other streets, you’re liable to see about as many foreigners as you will Americans; but here they’re pretty near all Americans. It’s kind of a satisfaction to see the good, old-fashioned faces people have in this city.”
“I like to hear you praising old-fashioned things,” Martha Shelby said slyly. “You must have something dreadfully important to say to your grandmother, Dan.”
“Why?”
“Well, don’t people put on their robes of state for tremendous occasions? Or did you just get so in the habit of it in New York that you can’t give it up?”
“Maybe that’s it,” he laughed. “But I expect it’ll wear off pretty soon if I stay here; and anyhow I am glad to get back. The fact is I’m a lot gladder than I expected to be. The minute I got off the train I had a kind of feeling — a pretty strong feeling — that this is where I honestly belong. It was home, and the people and the streets and the yards and trees and even the air — they all felt homelike to me. And when I went into our good old house — why, I felt as if I hadn’t been in a house, not a real house, all the time I was away. But most of all, it’s the people.”
“Your father and mother?”
“Yes,” he said;— “but I mean everybody else, too. I mean you can seem to breathe easier with ’em and let out your voice to a natural tone without gettin’ scared you’re goin’ to break a vase or something. For instance, I mean the way I feel with you, Martha. You see, with some New York people — I don’t mean anything against ’em of course; but sometimes, when a person’s with ’em, he almost feels as if he ought to be artificial or unnatural or something; but nobody could ever feel anything like that with you, Martha.”
“No?” she said, and looked at him with a gravity in which there was a slight apprehension. “Perhaps you might like a little artificiality, though, just for a change. A moment ago you said you thought your New York habits would wear off, and you’d get more natural, if you stay here. What did you mean?”
“Me not natural?” he asked, surprised. “Why, don’t I seem natural?”
“Yes, of course. You wouldn’t know how not to be. You meant about your clothes. You said you’d probably get over wearing so much finery as a daily habit, if you stay here. Aren’t you going to stay here, Dan?”
Her sidelong glance at him took note of a change in his expression, a perplexity that was faintly troubled, whereupon the hint of apprehension in her own look deepened. “Don’t tell me you’re not!” she exclaimed suddenly, and as he failed to respond at once, she repeated this with emphasis so increased that it seemed a little outcry: “Don’t tell me you’re not!”
“I certainly hope to stay here,” he said seriously. “I didn’t realize how much I hoped to until I got back. I certainly would hate to leave this good old place where I grew up.”
“But why should you leave it? Your mother told me the other day you expected to go into business here as soon as you get your grandfather’s estate settled.”
“Yes, I know,” he returned, and she observed that his seriousness and his perplexity both increased. “It’s always been my idea to do that,” he went on, “and I still hope to carry it out. At any rate I’m goin’ to try to.”
“Then why don’t you? What on earth could prevent you?”
Upon this, he seemed to take a sudden resolution. “Martha,” he said, “I’ve got a notion to tell you about something; — it’s something beautiful that’s happened to me. I haven’t told anybody yet. I wanted to tell my father and mother last night; but Harlan kept sittin’ around where they were, until they went to bed; and somehow I didn’t like to talk about it before him — anyway not at first. And to-day I haven’t had a chance to tell ’em; father’s been down at his office and mother had two charity board meetings. So you’ll be the first person to know it.”
“Will I?” Martha said in a low voice.
But he did not notice its altered quality; he was too much preoccupied with what he was saying; and he still looked forward into the perplexing distance. His companion’s gaze, on the contrary, was turned steadily upon him; and the sunniness that had been in her eyes had vanished, the colour of her cheeks was not so brave in the cold air. “I’m a little afraid to hear it, Dan,” she said. “I’m afraid you’re going to say you got engaged to someone in New York. You are?”
“Yes,” he answered gravely. “That’s what I’m just on the way to tell my grandmother.”
“I guessed it,” Martha said quietly; and was silent for a moment; — then she laughed. “I might have guessed it from your clothes, Dan. You got all dressed up like this just to talk about her! And to your grandmother!”
A little hurt by her laughter, he turned his head to look at her and saw that there were sudden bright lines along her eyelids. “Why, Martha!” he cried. “Why, what — —”
“Isn’t it natural?” she asked, smiling at him to contradict the testimony offered by her tears. “I’ve always had you for a next-door neighbour; you’ve always been my best friend among the boys I grew up with; — I’m afraid I’ll lose you if you get married. Everybody likes you, Dan; I think everybody’ll feel the same way. We’ll all be afraid we’ll lose you.”
“Why, Martha!” he exclaimed again, but he had difficulty in misrepresenting a catch in his throat as a cough. “I didn’t — I didn’t expect you’d think of it like this. I do hope it doesn’t mean that I’ll have to live in New York. I still hope to get her to come here. I — I’d certainly hate to lose you more than you would to lose me. I’ve always thought of you as my best friend, too, and I couldn’t imagine anything making that different. I’d hoped — I do hope — —”
“What, Dan?”
“I hope you — I hope you’ll like her, if we come home to live. I hope you’ll be her friend, too.”
“Indeed I will!” she promised so earnestly that her utterance was but a husky whisper. “I’m glad I’m the first you told, Dan. Thank you.”
“No, no,” he said awkwardly. “It just happened that way.”
“Well, at least I’m glad it did,” she returned, and brushing her eyes lightly with the back of a shapely hand, showed him a cheerful countenance. “See! you had just time to tell me.”
Chapter IV
SHE NODDED TO where before them a long wooden picket fence outlined the street boundary of Mrs. Savage’s lawn. Here was an older quarter than that upper reach of National Avenue whence the two young people had come; the houses here and southward were most of them substantial and ample, but not of the imposing spaciousness prevailing farther
up the avenue. Three or four of them had felt the seventies so deeply as to adopt the mansard roof in company with one or two parasite slate turrets; but in the main the houses were without pretentiousness; and among them it was curious and pleasant to see lingering two or three white, low-gabled cottages of a single story.
In the summertime old-fashioned flowers grew in the yards of these, and there might be morning-glories climbing over the front doors; for the cottages were relics of the time when the city was a village and this region was the outlying fringe, beyond the end of the wooden sidewalks. Now, however, it was almost upon the edge of commerce; — there was smoke in the air, and through the haze were seen rising, a few blocks to the south, the blue silhouettes of dozens of office buildings, the court-house tower, and the giant oblong of the first skyscraper, the First National Bank, eleven stories high. Moreover, one of the white cottages had for next-door neighbour the first apartment house to be built in the city; — it was just finished, rose seven stories above its little neighbour, and was significantly narrow. The ground here had already become costly.
Mrs. Savage’s gray picket fence joined the white picket fence of the overshadowed white cottage and her house was a good sample of four-square severity, built of brick and painted gray, with two noble old walnut trees in front, one on each side of the brick walk that led from the gate to the small veranda. Here she had lived during little less than half a century; — that is to say, ever since her house had been called “the finest residence in the city,” when her husband built it in the decade before the Civil War. Here, too, she “preferred to die,” as she said brusquely when her daughter wished her to come and live at the Oliphants’, after Mr. Savage’s death. She was still “fully able to keep house” for herself, she added, and expected to do so until Smith and Lieven came for her; Smith and Lieven being the undertakers who had conducted all the funerals in her family.
But at ninety-two it is impossible to withhold all concessions; even a lady whose pioneer father whipped her when she was fifteen must bend a little; and although Mrs. Savage still declined to sit in a comfortable chair, she took a daily nap in the afternoon. She had just risen and descended to her parlour, and settled herself by the large front window, when the two young people, coming along the sidewalk, reached the north end of her picket fence.
She did not recognize them at first; for, although her eyes “held out,” as she said, they held out not quite well enough for her to see faces except as ivory or pinkish blurs, unless they were close to her. However, the two figures interested her; and because of their slow approach and something intimate in the way they seemed to be communing, she guessed that they might be lovers. To her surprise, they halted at her gate, but, instead of coming in, continued their conversation there for several moments. Then, though they appeared loath to separate, each took both of the other’s hands for a moment, in an impulsive gesture distinctly expressive of emotion, and the woman’s figure went down the street, walking hurriedly, while the man’s came in at the gate and approached the front door. Mrs. Savage recognized her grandson, but no slightest change in her expression or attitude marked the moment of recognition.
Upon the sound of the bell, the old coloured man who had been her servant for thirty years came softly through the hall, but instead of opening the door to the visitor he presented himself before his mistress in the parlour. He was a thin old man of the darkest brown, neat and erect, with a patient expression, a beautifully considerate manner, and a tremulous tenor voice. In addition, his given name was both romantic and religious: Nimbus.
“You like to receive callers, Miz Savage?” he inquired. “Doorbell ring.”
“I heard it,” the old lady informed him somewhat crisply. “Have you any reason to suppose I can’t hear my own doorbell?”
“No’m.”
“Then why did you see fit to mention that it rang?”
“I don’ know, ‘m. You hear good as what I do, Miz Savage,” he returned apologetically. “I dess happen say she ring. Mean nothin’ ‘t all. You like me bring ’em in or say ain’t home, please?”
“It’s my grandson, Dan.”
“Yes’m,” said Nimbus, turning to the door; “I go git him.”
He went out into the broad hall and opened the door to the thoughtful young man waiting there, who shook hands with him and greeted him warmly; whereupon Nimbus glowed visibly, expressing great pleasure and cordiality. “My goo’nuss me!” he said. “Hope I be close on hand when you git ready shed them clo’es, Mist’ Dan. You’ grammaw cert’n’y be overjoice’ to see you ag’in. She settin’ in polluh waitin’ fer you, if you kinely leave me rest you’ silk hat an’ gole-head cane. My, look at all the gole on nat cane!”
Receiving this emblem of state with murmurous reverence, he solicitously bore it to the marble-topped table as the young man entered the room where his grandmother awaited him. She sat by the broad window, which had been the first plate-glass window in the town, and in her cap with lace lappets and her full, dark gown, she was not unsuggestive, in spite of her great age, of Whistler’s portrait of his mother. Certainly, until her grandson took her hand and sat down beside her, she was as motionless as a portrait.
“Grandma,” he said remorsefully, “I’m afraid you feel mighty hurt with me. I know it looked pretty selfish of me not to come home sooner, so we could go ahead and get grandpa’s estate settled up. I expect you think I haven’t been very thoughtful of you, and you certainly have got a right to feel kind of cross with me, but the truth is — —”
“No,” she interrupted quietly. “Your father was too busy to attend to the estate himself, and I didn’t want Harlan because I know he’d spend all his time criticizing; and besides he didn’t offer to do it in the first place, and you did. But your father hired a lawyer for me, and the work’s about finished.”
“I know what you think of me — —” he began but again she interrupted.
“No; you behaved naturally in staying away. Young people always say they like to help old people, but it isn’t natural. Mankind are all really just Indians, naturally. In some of the lower Indian tribes they kill off everybody that gets old and useless, and that’s really the instinct of the young in what we call civilization. We old people understand how you young people really think of us.”
“Oh, my!” the young man groaned. “I was afraid you were a little hurt with me, but I didn’t dream you’d feel this way about it.”
“No,” she said;— “you were having too good a time to dream how anybody’d feel about anything. Your father and mother worried some about you, and once or twice your father talked of going East to see what you were up to. They were afraid you were running wild, but I told ’em they needn’t fret about that.”
“Did you, grandma?”
“Yes. Your running wild would never amount to much; you come of too steady a stock on both sides not to get over it and settle down. No; what I was afraid of is just what I expect has happened.”
“What’s that?” Dan asked indulgently. “What do you think’s happened, grandma? Think I got too extravagant and threw away a lot of money?”
“No,” she replied; and to his uncomfortable amazement continued grimly: “I expect you’ve fallen in love with some no-account New York girl and want to marry her.”
“Grandma!”
“I do!” the old lady asserted. “Isn’t that what’s been the matter with you?”
She spoke challengingly, with an angry note in the challenge, and Dan’s colour, ruddy after his walk, grew ruddier; — the phrase “no-account New York girl” hurt and offended him, even though his grandmother knew nothing whatever of Lena McMillan. “You’re very much mistaken,” he said gravely.
“I hope so,” Mrs. Savage returned. “Who was that you were talking to out at my front gate?”
“Martha Shelby.”
“Martha? That’s all right,” she said, and added abruptly: “If you’ve got to marry somebody you ought to marry her.”
�
��What?”
“If you’ve got to marry somebody,” this uncomfortable old lady repeated, “why don’t you marry Martha?”
“Why, that’s just preposterous!” Dan protested. “The last person in the world Martha’d ever think of marrying would be me, and the last person I’d ever think of marrying would be Martha.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeated incredulously. “Why, because we aren’t in love with each other and never could be! Never in the world!”
“It isn’t necessary,” Mrs. Savage informed him. “You’d get along better if you weren’t. Martha comes of good stock, and she’s like her stock.”
“There are other ‘good stocks’ in the country,” he thought proper to remind her gently. “There are a few people in New York of fairly good ‘stock’, you know, grandma.”
“Maybe a few,” she said;— “but not our kind. The surest way to make misery is to mix stocks. You come of the best stock in the country, and you’ll be mighty sick some day if you go mixing it with a bad one.”
“But good gracious!” he cried, “who’s talking of my mixing it with a — —”
“Never mind,” she interrupted crossly. “I know what those New York girls are like.”
“But, grandma — —”
“I do,” she insisted. “They don’t know anything in the world except French and soirées, and it’s no wonder when you look at their stocks!”
“Grandma — —”
“Listen to me,” she bade him sharply. “The best stocks in England were the yeoman stocks; you ought to know that much, yourself, after all these years you’ve spent at school and college. The strongest in mind and body out of the English yeoman stocks came to America; they fought the Indians and the French and the British and got themselves a country of their own. Then, after that, the strongest in mind and body out of those stocks came out here and opened this new country and built it up. All they’ve got left in the East now are the remnants that didn’t have gumption and get-up enough to strike out for the new land. The only thing that keeps the East going is the people that emigrate back there from here in the second and third generations. Don’t you mix your stock with any remnants! D’you hear me?”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 333
