“Wasn’t it?” his father inquired gravely. “I don’t see anything else.”
Harlan laughed again with the same dry brevity. “She always hoped Dan would marry Martha Shelby — and she kept on hoping it, even after he married Lena.”
“Harlan!” his mother protested. “You oughtn’t to speak like that! Why, mother couldn’t any more have thought of such a thing, when Dan was already married — —”
“She died hoping it,” Harlan insisted. “I tell you — —”
Mr. Oliphant interrupted. “That seems to me about as far-fetched an idea as I’ve often heard, Harlan.”
“Does it, sir? Didn’t you ever hear grandmother express her opinion of Lena?”
“Somewhat frequently.”
“Did you ever hear her mention her conviction that Lena was entirely mercenary and married Dan because she thought he was rich?”
“She talked that way sometimes — yes.”
“And didn’t Lena just show us she thinks that’s what the will means, herself?”
“Possibly,” Mr. Oliphant admitted. “But that doesn’t prove — —”
“You might just read over that document of grandma’s again,” Harlan suggested. “She appears to leave me everything and Dan nothing, but gives mother a very comfortable living income, and she knew mother will take care of him when he needs it. What’s most significant, she provides that mother can leave the principal to any one she pleases. Don’t you suppose grandma knew it will naturally come to Dan eventually? She’s really taken care of him, and at the same time made it appear that he’s cut off with this thirty-five hundred dollars that’ll last him about a minute. She did it because she hoped Lena would leave him and get a divorce.”
“No, no!” Mrs. Oliphant cried out. “Mother wouldn’t have had such a wicked thought. She had the strictest ideas about morality I ever — —”
“Yes, she did,” Harlan agreed. “Yet that’s just what she planned. You may not see it, but it’s as plain to me as if she had written it in her will. And there’s something more than that in it, too.”
“What is it?” Mr. Oliphant inquired skeptically. “What is the something more that’s hidden from every eye but yours?”
Harlan reddened and failed to reply at once; — then he said with a reluctant humour: “I’m afraid she’s played it rather low down on me, sir.”
“What!” Mr. Oliphant stared at him. “You call leaving you five or six hundred thousand dollars playing it rather low down?”
“You’d say it’s a fantastic view, would you, sir?”
“Yes, I believe I should — considerably!”
“Maybe so,” Harlan said. “Yet there seems some ground for it. Grandma knew — that is, I mean she thought — she thought that I had certain hopes about Martha myself, and she told me pretty plainly I’d better keep out of the way. Well, she’s put me in a fine light before Martha, hasn’t she? Here’s Dan, all his life supposed to be the favourite, with great expectations, and now he’s cut off with a shilling, and I get it all! In the eyes of a sympathetic woman who’s always liked him best anyhow, isn’t he the suffering hero, and don’t I play the rôle of the brother that undermined him and supplanted him?”
“That’s nonsense,” his father said a little irritably. “You don’t suppose your grandmother deliberately — —”
“I don’t suppose she meant unkindly by me,” Harlan interrupted. “Naturally I don’t suppose my grandmother made me her residuary legatee for the purpose of injuring me. Probably she thought I’d be consoled by what she was leaving me.”
“Oh, Harlan!” his mother cried reproachfully.
But Harlan only smiled at her faintly and did not defend himself.
“So Lena will leave Dan now, will she?” Mr. Oliphant inquired, with satire. “And then Dan will proceed in freedom to carry out the rest of this programme?”
“No, sir; not at all.”
“But haven’t you just been saying — —”
“I’ve been saying what I see in the will,” Harlan explained. “I’ve been saying what grandma hoped, and I think she was pretty shrewd, but I believe that her dislike of Lena led her into an error. I haven’t the remotest idea that Lena will leave her husband.”
“I see!” Mr. Oliphant returned sharply. “You mean you haven’t any fantastic ideas yourself, Harlan; it’s only your grandmother who had them, though she’s just left you a fortune!”
His tone was hard; and Harlan, looking at him gravely, pointed out a significance in the hardness. “There it is, sir. Already I’m a little more unpopular with you than usual, because you can’t help sympathizing with Dan and feeling that I’ve got his share as well as my own. Don’t you think other people may feel the same way?”
For a moment Mr. Oliphant looked slightly disconcerted by this bit of analysis, but, recovering himself, “Not necessarily,” he replied. “I’m not criticizing you because of your inheritance, but because it doesn’t seem fair in you to impute all this surreptitious planning to a person who’s shown such generosity to you. You don’t seem to realize — —”
“Oh, but I do,” Harlan interrupted. “Mother spoke of my not seeming elated and praised me for it. I don’t deserve her praise. You see, if I don’t feel much elated just at first it’s because to my mind the whole thing is another example of how much better grandma liked Dan and how much better other people are going to go on liking him. Naturally, I’m glad to have the money; I know she meant well by me, and I appreciate it. I appreciate another thing, too. One of the reasons she left it to me was that she knew I put what I had from grandfather into the safest type of municipal bonds. She knew that I’d understand the value of whatever she left me. She knew I’d take care of it.”
He put a slight but sharp and dry emphasis upon the final words, “She knew I’d take care of it,” so that there was a hint of warning in them; and he added, making this note more definite: “She was right about that, because I will take care of it.”
Upon that, he struck both arms of his chair decisively with the palms of his hands, and, as a continuation of this action, rose and turned to the window, his back to his parents. They glanced nervously at each other, each knowing that the other had the same hope and the same doubt; the glance they exchanged meaning, “You speak to him about it!” Mr. Oliphant yielded and coughed uncomfortably as a prelude, but his wife impulsively decided to begin the task for him.
“Harlan, dear,” she said, “your father and I both know you’ve always acted conscientiously in everything you’ve ever done; and of course what mother’s given you ought to be regarded as a sacred trust. You’re right to say you’ll take care if it, but we feel — I mean your father and I feel — —” She faltered, and appealed to her husband: “You do feel that perhaps — perhaps under the circumstances — perhaps — —”
“Yes,” Mr. Oliphant said as she came to a helpless stop;— “I think under the circumstances Harlan might — might properly see fit to — —” But here he, too, hesitated and seemed unable to continue.
Their son, however, understood them perfectly, and turned sharply to face them. “Of course I knew you’d ask it,” he said, and an old bitterness, long held down within him, came to the surface. “I knew you wanted me to let Dan have even that twenty-five thousand dollars grandfather left me. You really wanted me to let him throw it away along with his own, though you never spoke out and asked me to do it. Martha Shelby did, though. She spoke out plainly enough! The fact that grandfather gave it to me never entered her head. She only thought I was miserly for not putting it into Dan’s hands to be squandered. That’s what she thought, and I’ve understood all along that my mother and my father had a great deal the same feeling.”
“No, no,” his mother protested, for the bitterness in his voice had increased as he spoke. “We never reproached you, dear.”
“No, not in words maybe.”
“No, not in any way,” she said. “It was right of you to take care of it, and you’d be r
ight now to take care of what you’ll have. Your father and I only mean that now you have so much — —”
“Now that I have so much,” Harlan echoed, “I ought to throw away part of it, even though grandma’s trusted me to save it from just this very wastage and to take care of every bit of it?”
“No, no; it isn’t that,” Mrs. Oliphant said; and with pathetically naïve artfulness she changed the basis of her appeal. “But you know, dear, you were just telling us how much Martha had wanted you to help Dan — she’s always been such a devoted friend of his — and you said that after she hears about mother’s bequest to you, she may take it as a kind of supplanting your brother, and it would be harder than ever for you to make her fond of you; so don’t you see — don’t you see what a splendid effect it would have on her now, when you’ve got so much, dear, and could spare it — don’t you see, if you’d — if you’d — —”
“Yes, I see,” Harlan said grimly. “You think Martha might even admire me enough to marry me, if I’d say to Dan: ‘Here! I won’t accept all this that should have been yours. Here’s half of it.’”
“Oh, no,” she cried, “I didn’t mean half of it; I only meant you might — —”
“No,” Harlan said; “not any, mother — not a dime! I won’t impress Martha with a pose. I don’t want her or anybody else to like me because of a pose.”
“Would it be a pose,” Mr. Oliphant asked gravely, “to help your brother?”
“Wouldn’t it?” Harlan returned as gravely. “Isn’t it a pose to do something that isn’t natural to you, simply to make a woman admire you? I’d call that a pose, myself, though you may have another definition of the word. I’m not caring to get admiration that way, sir.”
“All right,” his father said, nodding, as the fragile edifice of Mrs. Oliphant’s gentle cunning was thus dispersed upon the air. “I should say you had the right spirit there. But why need it be an attitude? Wouldn’t you really like to help Dan out a little, Harlan?”
Harlan sighed. “Not in a failure, sir. First and last he’s had a pretty long chance to prove what he could do with his Addition, and he’s no nearer succeeding to-day than he was when he began. Instead, he’s lost all his money and all his time. All he’s done was to spoil a farm.”
“But if he had some really substantial assistance, it’s not absolutely impossible he might — —”
“No, sir,” Harlan said definitely; “I don’t believe in it, and I’ll never do it. I didn’t want to supplant him. I didn’t ask for what grandma’s done for me; I never did one thing to get it, or for the purpose of making her like me; and, as a matter of fact, she didn’t do it because she liked me. But she did know I’d take care of it, and I’m going to prove she was right about that, anyhow. I won’t throw any of it away on an attitude to make Martha Shelby think well of me. Of course she’ll be all the surer she’s right about me, now that I don’t do anything for him, though I have so much!” He picked up the copy of Mrs. Savage’s will from the table where his father had left it, and, sitting down again, prepared to look over it; but, as he placed in position the eye-glasses already necessary to him when he read, he sent a sidelong glance toward his parents, a glance in which there was the bitterness of an ancient pain. “I wouldn’t even throw any of it away to make my father and mother like me a little better, either,” he said.
Mrs. Oliphant cried out reproachfully: “Oh, Harlan!” and she would have said more; but her husband shook his head at her, and she was silent. Harlan finished his reading, set the manuscript down upon the table, and went away without speaking again, so that his parents were left to themselves and a thoughtful, somewhat melancholy silence.
Mrs. Oliphant broke it diffidently. “You don’t think mother ever dreamed that — —”
“That he might help Dan? No; not with the Addition. Harlan’s right when he says that’s just what she trusted him not to do.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Mrs. Oliphant explained. “I mean — you know what he said about mother’s hoping — I mean his saying he thought mother had those wild ideas about Lena’s going away and — and Martha Shelby — —”
“No,” her husband said. “No; I don’t think so. It seems unlikely. I don’t think your mother would have — —”
“No,” Mrs. Oliphant assented thoughtfully. “I can’t believe she would. Of course there isn’t any way of being sure — now.”
“No; but it’s probably just Harlan’s imagination. He’s sensitive, and that always means imaginative, too. I don’t think we need to dwell on it.”
“I suppose not. Especially as she couldn’t have meant anything like that. You don’t think she could, do you, dear?”
“No, no; I don’t think so,” he answered. “We’d better be worrying over other matters, I suspect.”
“You mean about getting Harlan to help Dan out?”
“Yes.”
“Of course I can do something,” she said. “I’ll help all I can with the income mother’s given me; we’ve always managed to live very comfortably without it. But Harlan — why, I almost believe Dan could make a success of the Addition, if Harlan would do something substantial about it. Yes; we ought to be able to think of some way to get him to do it.”
Chapter XVIII
THEY THOUGHT OF many ways to get him to do it, but none of such ingenuity as to inspire them with confidence. Mrs. Oliphant made more suggestions than her husband did, and she put most of them into the form of little dramatic dialogues imagined as taking place between Mr. Oliphant and Harlan. Mr. Oliphant was to say such-and-such things to Harlan, who would necessarily reply in certain terms, which she sketched; — whereupon his father could triumphantly turn the words just uttered into proof that Harlan would not only be doing his duty by helping Dan, but at the same time would make great headway with Martha Shelby in a straightforward manner involving not the slightest pose.
Unfortunately, after each of these small dramas in turn, becoming eager in her opinion that “this time” she had “got it,” she was forced into pessimism by Mr. Oliphant’s pointing out that Harlan wouldn’t say what she had sketched for him; but, on the contrary, was certain to express himself to an effect precisely the opposite.
Many times that afternoon the poor lady murmured, “No, I suppose perhaps it wouldn’t do after all,” and pondered again. “But why don’t you think of a way that would do?” she asked, with more spirit, after one of her failures. “You’re a lawyer; you ought to be able to think of something.”
He laughed and made the gesture of a man helpless between opposing viewpoints of his own. “What provokes me is that I can’t help seeing Harlan’s side of it, too. There’s a good deal to be said on his side, you know.”
“Yes, indeed,” she readily assented. “He thinks he’s perfectly right; but of course he isn’t.”
“Well, why isn’t he? After all, your mother trusted him to do just what we’re planning to get him not to do.”
“But her will doesn’t say he can’t help Dan. So why shouldn’t he?”
“No,” Mr. Oliphant interrupted; “it doesn’t say he mustn’t; but that’s what she counted on. In our hearts we’re blaming him for not betraying a trust, and for being unwilling to put money into the fire; — he honestly believes it would be putting it into the fire. And he won’t do it, even though he knows his refusing makes him look mean in the eyes of pretty much everybody he cares about, even in the eyes of the person he seems to care most about. Well, there’s something rather fine in a stand like that, after all.”
“Martha’d never forgive him!” Mrs. Oliphant said emphatically. “Never! If he doesn’t help Dan, now that he’s got so much, she’d always believe him terribly stingy. So you see we ought to persuade him for his own good, too — if we could only think of a way.”
But they continued to find that elusive way beset by baffling afterthoughts; and when Dan came home from his excursion, successful and in high fettle, they spoke to him of the subject that had been engrossing
them — and were straightway baffled again. Dan even declined the proffer of future assistance from his mother.
“Not a penny!” he said. “She didn’t have any faith in me, and she despised the whole idea of Ornaby. She gave me thirty-five hundred dollars of my own — bless her for it! She gave me that to do with as I please, and it’s plenty. Why, to-morrow I’m goin’ to fix up the interest on what’s owed on the land, and then I’ve got to settle another little matter, and after that I — —”
“Wait, Dan,” his father interposed. “What other little matter is it you have to settle? I didn’t know anything had been worrying you except the probable foreclosure.”
“It didn’t, sir. I didn’t worry about this at all. I knew I could fix it all right, if I could just hold off the foreclosure. It seems I’ve never paid any of the taxes on the Addition — I’ve had so many other things on my mind, it seems I just kind of neglected that — and so somebody’s got a tax title to it; but now I can settle with him to-morrow morning and clear it off — and then I’m goin’ to turn up some sod out there! I’m goin’ to get ready to lay the foundation for my first factory!”
“But the money, dear!” his mother cried. “How in the world do you expect even to lay the foundations unless we can get Harlan — —”
“No, ma’am! I wouldn’t take a nickel of it if he begged me to! I’ve been pretty near where I was ready to steal to get money to pull me out of a hole; but I’ll never take one single cent of what grandma left Harlan, or of what she left you either. If she’d meant me to have it she’d have given it to me herself; but she didn’t have any faith in me, and she says so in plain words in her will. You don’t expect me to take help from her that she wanted to prevent, do you? Never in this world!”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 349
