Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  His father stood watching him, and seemed to be a little troubled, showing a tendency toward apologetic embarrassment. “Oh — ah, Dan — —” he said, and paused.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I — ah — we — don’t want you to think — —”

  “Think what, sir?”

  “Why, about your young lady — you took us by surprise, Dan. We weren’t looking for what you told us, and so it took your mother and me a little bit off our feet, as it were, Dan.”

  “I — I suppose so,” Dan said. “I expect I didn’t go about it with any intelligence in particular, likely. I expect I ought to have — —”

  “No, no. You were all right, Dan. Only as we weren’t just looking for it, we’ve been afraid we didn’t seem as hearty about it as we should have.”

  “Oh, that’s all right.” Dan was embarrassed in his turn. “You were — you were both just lovely about it, sir. I didn’t expect — I mean, it isn’t the kind of thing there’s any call for you and mother to make a big jollification and fuss over. I wasn’t expectin’ anything like that.”

  “No,” his father said thoughtfully, “I suppose not. Only we’ve been afraid you might have been a little disappointed in the quiet way we took it.”

  “Oh, no, sir!”

  “Well, I hope not. And anyway, Dan, we are glad about it, if you’re sure you are.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  “And we want you to know we’re with you, Dan. We’re with you and for you, and we stand by you,” Mr. Oliphant continued; then paused, and concluded with a haste not altogether fortunate— “whatever happens.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dan said, seeming to flinch a little, though meekly; and his father at once added an amendment to the awkward phrase.

  “Of course, we think only the pleasantest things will happen, Dan. And we want you to understand that this house must be home for anybody that belongs to you as much as it is for the rest of us. You know we feel that way, don’t you, son?”

  “Yes, sir. I do hope to bring her here, if you’ll let me. I’ve been thinkin’ about it a great deal, and I believe this town is my town” — Dan flushed a little as he spoke— “and I want to prove it, and I want Lena to learn to feel about it the way I do. I believe she’d miss something out of her life if she didn’t. And I want you all to learn what a noble girl she is. I know you will, father.”

  “Why, of course!” Mr. Oliphant took his son’s hand and shook it. “We didn’t happen to say it downstairs, but we do congratulate you, Dan. As far as anybody can tell from a photograph” — he paused again here, then finished with a great heartiness of voice— “why, as far as you can tell from that, why, she looks like — she looks like a mighty pretty girl.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dan smiled with a little constraint. “There’s something else I want to talk over with you when we get time enough. I’ve got hold of a big idea, father.”

  “Have you, my boy?”

  “It’s about our future,” Dan said nervously. “I mean Lena’s and mine.” He hesitated, then went on: “I expect it sounds like big talk from a little man, but I believe it’s goin’ to be a great thing for the future of our city, too.”

  Upon this his father’s expression of friendly concern became complicated by evidences of a slight inward struggle, but he was able to respond with sufficient gravity: “Do you, Dan? What is it?”

  “It’s an idea for a big development, sir. I mean a development in the way this city’s commenced to grow.”

  “Indeed?”

  “I guess I better tell you another time, sir; it’s got lots of details, and I’m afraid I ought to be gettin’ on over to Aunt Olive’s now, sir.”

  “I suppose so,” Mr. Oliphant said, relinquishing his son’s hand. “I only wanted to say — about your engagement — it’s all right with us, old fellow, and we just hope we’ll be all right with her.”

  Dan was touched. His father spoke with feeling, and the young man could not trust his eyes to be seen. He hurried out into the spacious upper hall, not looking back, though he said: “Yes, sir; thank you,” in a choked voice. Then, when he was halfway down the stairs, he called cheerfully: “I’ll let you know to-morrow morning if there’s anything much the matter with young Charlie. I’ll be home for breakfast, anyway, and I’ll tell you about my idea then, too. It’s goin’ to be a mighty big thing, father!”

  “I hope so, my boy,” Mr. Oliphant returned; and although there was moisture in his own eyes, he had difficulty in restraining, until the front door closed, a tendency to laughter.

  Chapter VI

  THAT GREEN BRONZE swan of the fountain in the broad yard next door to the Oliphants’ should have been given a new interpretation this season; the open beak, forever addressing itself obliquely to the eastern sky, might well have been thought to complain to heaven of the spiteful hanging on of winter. It was a winter that long outwore its welcome, and then kept returning like a quarrelsome guest forcing his way back to renew argument after repeated ejectments; — the Shelbys’ swan was fortunate to be of bronze, for a wet snow filled that exasperated-looking beak of his choke-full one morning a month after the lilacs had shown green buds along their stems. Then, adding mockery to assault, this grotesque weather spent hour after hour patiently constructing a long goatee of ice upon the helpless bird.

  Martha Shelby knocked it off late in the afternoon, though by that time the western sun had begun to make all icicles into opals, radiant with frozen fire and beautiful. “Insulting thing!” Martha said, as she brought the ferrule of her umbrella resentfully against the icicle, which broke into pieces that clattered lightly down to the stone basin below. “Of all the Smart Alecks I ever knew I think the worst one’s the weather!”

  Her companion, a thin young man with an astrakhan collar to his skirted long overcoat, assented negligently. He had happened to overtake her as she walked up National Avenue from downtown, and was evidently disposed to extend the casual encounter at least as far as her door, for he went on with her in that direction as he spoke.

  “Yes, I dare say. Nature, in general, has a way of taking liberties with us that we wouldn’t tolerate from our most intimate friends. I suspect if we got at the truth of things we’d find that most of our legislation is really an attempt to prevent Nature from getting the better of us.”

  “Murder!” said Martha. “That’s too deep for me, Harlan! Let’s go on talking about poor old Dan and things I can understand. Come into the house and I’ll give you some tea; you’re the only man-citizen I know in town who likes tea. I ought to warn you that papa thinks there’s something queer about you since that day after the matinée when you came in and had tea with me. He thought it was bad enough, your being at the matinée — papa says if an old man is seen at a matinée it looks as if he’s gone bankrupt and doesn’t care, but if it’s a young man he must be out of a job and too lazy to look for a new one — and for any man not only to go to a matinée, but to drink tea afterwards, well, papa was terribly mystified about anybody named Oliphant doing such a thing! He can’t imagine a man’s consenting to drink tea except to help fight off a chill.”

  “Oh, I know!” Harlan said. “I realize it’s a terrible thing for one to do, only three generations away from the pioneers.”

  As Martha chattered she had opened one of the double front doors, which were unlocked, and now she preceded him into the large central hall, floored with black and white squares of marble. A fine staircase, noble in proportions and inevitably of black walnut, followed a curving upward sweep against curved walls to the third story; while upon both sides of the hall, broad and lofty doorways, with massive double doors standing open, invited the caller to apartments heavily formal in brown velvet and damasks of gold.

  In obedience to a casual wave of Martha’s hand, as she disappeared through a doorway at the other end of the hall, Harlan left his overcoat and hat upon a baroque gold console-table and entered the drawing-room to his left. Here a fire of soft coal sought to enli
ven a ponderous black-marble mantelpiece, and Harlan, warming his hands, gazed disapprovingly at the painting hung upon the heavy paper of the wall above. This painting was not without celebrity, but after looking at it seriously for several minutes Harlan shook his head at it, and was caught in the act by Martha, who came in with a light step behind him.

  “Don’t scold the poor thing, Harlan!” she said; and, as he turned, a little startled, he took note again of a fact he had many times remarked before: she moved with a noiseless rapidity unusual in so large a person. Moreover, her quickness was twice in evidence now; for she had changed her dark cloth dress for a gown of gray silk; and as final testimony to her celerity, when she sat in a chair by the fire and crossed her knees, a silken instep of gray was revealed between the silver buckle of her slipper and the hem of the long skirt she wore in the mode of that time.

  “You’re like lightning, Martha,” Harlan said;— “but not like thunder. I didn’t even hear you come into the room. What is it you don’t want me to scold?”

  “Poor papa’s Corot.”

  “I wasn’t scolding it. I was only thinking: What’s the use of having a Corot if you hang it so high and so much against the dazzle of the firelight that nobody can see it.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter to papa,” Martha said cheerfully. “Papa doesn’t care to see it; and he doesn’t care whether any one else sees it or not. He bought it the summer the doctor made him go abroad, after mamma died. Somebody in Paris convinced him he ought to own an important picture. They took him first to see a Bougereau and he got very indignant. So they apologized and hurried out this Corot and told him who Corot was; so he bought it. All he cares about is that he owns it; he doesn’t think about it as a thing to look at any more than the bonds in his safety-deposit boxes. He knows they’re there, and they’re worth just so much, and they’re his; and that’s all he cares about. You know papa runs the house to suit himself.”

  “No,” Harlan returned skeptically. “I can’t say I quite know that.”

  “You don’t?” She laughed and went on: “Well, he does; especially when he gets set in his head. A few of papa’s notions are just molasses, but most of ’em are like plaster of Paris; — if you don’t change ’em in a hurry before they set you never can change ’em! That’s the trouble just now; he’s turned into plaster of Paris about poor Dan’s land operations, confound him!”

  She uttered this denunciation with a sharpness of emphasis not ill-natured, but earnest enough to make Harlan look at her seriously across the small table just set between them by a coloured housemaid.

  “You’ve been trying to alter your father’s opinion of Dan’s commercial ability, have you?” he inquired.

  “Yes, I have,” she answered crisply. “What’s the matter with the business men of this town, anyway? Why won’t they help Dan do a big thing?”

  At this Harlan allowed his eyes to fall from the troubled and yet spirited inquiry of her direct gaze; he looked at the cup he accepted from her, and frowned slightly as he answered: “Of course they think he’s a visionary. The most enthusiastic home boomer in the lot doesn’t dream the town’ll ever reach out as far as Dan’s foolish ‘Addition.’”

  “How do you know it’s foolish?”

  “Why, because the population would have to double to reach even the edge of his land, and this town hasn’t the kind of impetus that develops suburbs. You know what sort of place it is, yourself, Martha. It’s only an overgrown market-town, and an overgrown market-town is what it’ll always be.”

  “Don’t you like it?” she asked challengingly. “Don’t you even like the town you were born in and grew up in?”

  “That sounds like Dan. His latest phase is to become oratorical about the enormous future of our own, our native city — since he bought the Ornaby farm! I suppose I like it as well as I like any city except Florence. I don’t think it’s as ugly as New York, for instance, because the long stretches of big shade trees palliate our streets half the year, and nothing palliates the unevenness and everlasting tearing down and building up and digging and blasting and steam-riveting of New York. But I do hate the crudeness of things here.”

  “That’s the old, old cheap word for us,” she said, “‘Crude!’”

  Harlan laughed. “You have been listening to Dan, the civic patriot! Crudeness isn’t our specialty; the whole country’s crude, Martha.”

  “Compared to what? China?”

  “You’ll be telling me all about our literary societies and women’s clubs and the factories, if I don’t take care,” he returned lightly. “How dreadful all that is!” He sighed, and continued: “I suppose you’ve been trying to convince your father he ought to extend one of his street-car lines out into the wilderness toward Dan’s ‘Addition.’ Is that what you’ve been up to with the old gentleman, Martha?”

  “Yes, it is,” she said quickly. “If he doesn’t, how are people to get out there?”

  “Quite so! That’s one reason why everybody downtown is laughing at Dan. Your father will never do it, Martha. Have you any idea he will?”

  “Not much of one,” she admitted sadly, and shook her head. “He doesn’t understand Dan’s theory that the car line would pay for itself by fares from the people who’d build along the line.”

  “No, I shouldn’t think he’d understand that — at least not very sympathetically!”

  “Dan isn’t discouraged, is he?” she asked.

  “No, he isn’t the temperament to be discouraged by anything. It’s a matter of disposition, not of facts, and Dan was born to be a helpless optimist all his life. For instance, he still believes that when he marries his Miss McMillan and brings her here to live, grandmother will learn to like her! Yet he ought to know by this time that grandmother’s a perfect duplicate of your father in the matter of plaster of Paris. I suppose you’ve seen Miss McMillan’s photograph, Martha?”

  Harlan glanced at her as if casually, but she answered without any visible embarrassment: “Oh, yes; he brought it over, and talked of her a whole evening. If the photograph’s like her — —” She paused.

  “It’s one of those photographs that are like,” Harlan observed. “My own judgment is that she’s not precisely the girl to put on a pair of overalls and go out and help Dan clear the underbrush off his ‘Addition.’”

  “Is he doing that himself? I haven’t seen him for days and days.”

  “No,” said Harlan. “You wouldn’t, because he is doing just about that. I believe he has five or six darkies helping him; but he keeps overalls for himself out there in a shed. He gets up before six, drives out in his runabout, with a nose-bag of oats for his horse under the seat, and he gets home after dark ready to drop, but still talking about what a success he’s going to make of the great and only ‘Ornaby Addition.’ He wears shabby clothes all the time — he seems not to care at all how he looks — and Saturdays he comes home at noon and spends the rest of the day downtown making orations to bankers and business men, especially your father.”

  “To no effect at all,” Martha said gloomily.

  “Oh, but I think he’s had an extraordinarily distinct effect!”

  “What effect is it?”

  “Well, I’m afraid,” Harlan said slowly;— “I’m afraid he’s been successful in making himself the laughing stock of the town.”

  “They — they think he’s just a joke?”

  “Not ‘just’ one,” the precise Harlan replied. “They think he’s the biggest one they’ve ever seen.”

  Martha uttered a sound of angry protest, though she did not speak at once, but stared frowningly at the fire; then she turned abruptly to Harlan. “Why don’t you help him?”

  “I? Well, he hasn’t asked me to help him, precisely. Did he tell you I — —”

  “No; he didn’t say anything about you. But why don’t you?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Harlan explained, a little annoyed, “he didn’t ask me for help, but he did want me to go in with him on strictly busi
ness grounds. He was certain that if I joined him as a partner, it would be a great thing for both of us. He wanted me to do the same thing he did — invest what grandfather left me in making the Ornaby farm blossom with horrible bungalows and corner drug stores.”

  “And you wouldn’t,” Martha said affirmatively.

  “Why should I, since I don’t believe in his scheme?”

  “But why couldn’t you believe in Dan himself?”

  “Good heavens!” Harlan exclaimed, and uttered a sound of impatient laughter. “I’ve never looked upon Dan as precisely a genius, Martha. Besides, even if by a miracle he could do something of what he dreams he can, what on earth would be the use of it? It would only be an extension of ugliness into a rather inoffensive landscape. I don’t believe he can do it in the first place; and in the second, I don’t believe in doing it even if it can be done.”

  “Don’t you?” she asked, and looked at him thoughtfully. “What do you believe in, Harlan?”

  “A number of things,” he said gravely. “For instance, I don’t believe in kicking up a lot of dust and confusion to turn a nice old farm into horrible-looking lots with hideous signboards blaring all over ’em.”

  “How characteristic!”

  “What is?”

  “I asked you what you believed in,” she explained. “You said you believed in ‘a number of things,’ and went straight on: ‘For instance, I don’t believe — —’”

  “Yes,” he said, “I was keeping to the argument about Dan.”

  Martha laughed at his calm sophistry, but was content to seem to accept it and to waive her point. “What do your father and mother think of ‘Ornaby Addition’?”

  “Oh, you know them! They understand as well as anybody that it’s all folly, but they don’t say so to Dan. I think poor father would even put something in just to please Dan, if he could spare it after what he’s lost in bad loans this year.”