Booth Tarkington

“ 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. ”

“ Harlan smiled, but his eyes were expressive of something far from amusement. It was as if here he referred to an old and troubling puzzlement of his, but had long ago resigned himself to the impossibility of finding a solution. “I mean she’s like you because she’s always thought so much more of Dan than she has of me, Martha.”
“Perhaps it’s because you’ve never seemed to think much of anything, yourself,” she said gently. “Perhaps we’re apt to like people best who do a great deal of liking themselves.” ”

“ You bring me to this flat town and its flat people, where not once in months can I hear a note of real music and where there’s no art and no beauty and no life—after you’d given me your word I should have a full year in Europe!—and you watch me struggling to bear it, to bear it with the best bravery I have in me, and the most kindness to you—and to be cheerful—and I dare you to say I haven’t made the best of it! ”

“ Lena interrupted. “Not more than five minutes or so! And she’s the one you especially want me to be friends with! I never saw a more awful person.”
“But what’s ‘awful’ about her?”
Lena shook her head, as if in despair of him for not comprehending Martha’s awfulness. “She’s just awful,” she said, implying that if he didn’t perceive for himself why Martha was awful he hadn’t a mind capable of being enlightened. “I suppose you expect me to be intimate with her father, too?”
Dan laughed desperately. “I wouldn’t be apt to ask you to be particularly intimate with anybody his age, Lena.” ”

“ Savage had been far from understanding her grandson’s deep pride, and, as he strode homeward in the slashing rain, her acrid warnings that he must not hope for anything from Martha repeated themselves over and over in his mind, as such things will, and upon each repetition stung the more.
He thought ruefully of the ancient popular notion that such stingings come from only the unpleasant truth. “It hurts him because it’s true,” people say, sometimes, as if mere insult must ever fail to rankle, and all accusation not well-founded fall but painlessly upon the righteous. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cameras of the new age sometimes record upon strips of moving film the slow life of a plant from the seed to the blossoming of its flower; and then there is thrown upon the screen a picture in which time is so quickened that the plant is seen in the very motions of its growth, twisting itself out of the ground and stretching and swelling to its maturity, all within a few minutes. ”

“ What he minded was her assumption that he was trying to take Dan’s place in Martha Shelby’s heart; Harlan wanted his own place there, or none.
He had wanted it ever since Martha was a handsome romping girl of fourteen and he a fastidious observer a little older. She was a romp, yet her boyish romping never lacked a laughing charm; for, although she was one of those big young girls who seem to grow almost overwhelmingly, she had the fortunate gift of gracefulness; she was somehow able to be large without ever being heavy. ”

“ And in addition to discovering the secret of the universe, the new society discovered golf, communism, the movies, and the turkey trot; it spread the great American cocktail over the whole world, abolished horses, and produced buildings fifty stories high.
. . . The slow beginnings of the new growth in the town had been imperceptible except to a few exuberant dreamers—the most persistent somnambulist of whom was Dan Oliphant—but now that the motion was daily more visible to all men, there was no stopping it. ”

“ CHAPTER XXVI SHE was mistaken about Martha, who never had the definite hope Lena’s imagination attributed to her. Martha was steadfast because she could not help it, having been born with this endowment evidently; and her tenderness for the boy she had loved so heartily was imperishable; but the Dan Oliphant of the middle years did not seem to her to be that boy. What she felt for the big middle-aged man, she felt only because he had long ago been the beloved youth; she was not in love with him, nor with anybody. ”

“ He was dry and cold, as he knew, yet far from incapable of ardour, and he had never entirely lost the ardour he felt for Martha; but what surprised him was the renewed liveliness of that ancient pain she evoked within him. He had thought it dead, but evidently it had only fallen into a doze in her absence.
Of course he asked himself why he should ache because she had at once resumed with him her old critical attitude, and why, moreover, he should care about her at all. She had almost no coquetry and little more of the quality called “sheer feminine charm” ”

“ Not defending herself from the criticism, she gazed thoughtfully at Harlan as he sat fanning himself with his straw hat—he was warm and flushed after their walk on this hot June morning—then she turned her eyes again to the wide lawn stretching before her down to the National Avenue sidewalk. Looking out from the shade of the veranda, her eyes needed the shelter of the curved fingers of her hand, a protection she gave them, resting her elbow on the stone railing beside her. The trimmed grass of the lawn was a blazing green, seen waveringly through visible pulsations of the heated air ”

“ Out of it, clouds of robust sculpture were slowly rising, muttering faintly as they rose, as if another planet approached and its giants grumbled, being roused from sleep to begin the assault.
“By George, that’s great!” Dan exclaimed in high delight. “That’s worth millions of dollars to the farmers, Lena.”
But Lena was as far as possible from sharing his enthusiasm. “I believe it’s going to be a thunderstorm. Turn back. I hate thunderstorms. I’m afraid of them.”
“Why, they won’t hurt you, Lena.”
“They frighten me and they do kill people. Please turn back.” ”

“ She was twenty-three or perhaps twenty-four, tall and robust, a large young woman, handsome, and in a state of exuberant good health—her hearty complexion and the brightness of her clear hazel eyes were proof enough of that—and though a powdery new snow, just fallen, lay upon the ground and the air was frosty, she wore her fur coat thrown as far open as possible. And that her thoughtfulness about the bronze swan was only an appearance of thoughtfulness, and not actual, was denoted by the fact that her halt at the fountain coincided with a sound from a short distance to the south of her. ”

“ Harlan shook his head. “No, I’m afraid I can’t, grandma.”
“Do you know why she hates me so?” the old lady demanded. “It’s because she’s bad, and she knows I know it. People never forgive you for knowing they’re bad. And now she’s brought this baby into the world to inherit her badness, and you sit there and wonder I say the child’s bound to turn out wrong.”
“Grandma!” the young man exclaimed, laughing. “I only wonder you don’t take into account the fact that the baby is Dan’s, too. Dan may be a rather foolish sort of person—in fact, I think he is—but surely you’ve never thought him bad.” ”

“ She had been so thoroughly alive for so many years that the separation of herself from life could not be abrupt, even if she wished it. She did not wish it she told Harlan, one rainy night, as he sat beside her bed after bringing her the news that she was a great-grandmother.
“I suppose it seems funny to you,” she said. “You must wonder why an old woman with nothing to live for would still want to live. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Harlan was displeased. “I suppose the smoke comes under your definition of beauty, too, doesn’t it?”
“It isn’t my definition,” George explained. “I was groping for Dan’s. Yes, I think the smoke’s beautiful to him because he believes it means growth and power, and he thinks they’re beautiful.”
“I dare say. Would you consider it a rational view for any even half-educated man to hold—that soft-coal smoke is beautiful? Do you think so, Martha, when it makes pneumonia epidemic, ruins everything white that you have in your house and everything white that you wear? Do you?” ”

“ 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?” ”

“ Oliphant perceived his son’s embarrassment, he had more to say, and went on with something like timidity, yet with a gentle persistence: “I’d like to tell you another thing, Dan. It’s something your mother and I never felt we ought to talk about to you, but I believe I’ll mention it to you to-day. We—you see your mother and I have always thought there’s a danger sometimes in letting a person see that you sympathize with him, because it might make him feel that he’s unhappy, or in trouble, whereas, if you just leave him to himself he may go on cheerfully enough and never think about it. ”

“ Daylight, showing too many things, may afterwards doubt them, but they are real and not to be forgotten. They are only moments; and yet, while this one had its mystic little life, Dan was possessed in part by the feeling, altogether vague, that somewhere a peculiar but indefinable mistake had been made by somebody not identified to him.
Moreover, here was matter more curious still: this thing he had all his life known about Martha, but had never realized until now, made her in a moment a woman new to him, so that she seemed to stand there, facing him across the iron fence, a new Martha. ”

“ You’re a splendid young man, Dan Oliphant. You’re good-looking; you’re honourable as the daylight; you’re kindhearted, and you’d be just as polite to a nigger or a dog as you would to the President; and anybody can tell all that about you by just looking at you once. But this good-for-nothing girl and her good-for-nothing family have made you feel you weren’t anybody at all, and ought to feel flattered to scrub their doormat! Don’t tell me! They have! And because you let yourself get as soft as a ninny over a silly little pretty face, you truckle to ’em.”
“Grandma!” ”

“ He had become a juggler of money, which poured streaming into one hand as fast as he hurled it aloft with the other. He was one of those men of whom it is said, “Nobody knows what he’s worth. He couldn’t tell you, himself, to save his life!” He was called “rich,” and sometimes he was said to be the richest man in town. He juggled with money, with land, with houses, with skyscrapers, and with factories, keeping them all in the air at once; and his brother said that even so, Dan still “danced the tight-rope,” maintaining his balance dangerously during the juggling. ”

“ So might a film record be made of the new growth bringing to full life a quiet and elderly midland town; but the picture would be dumfounding. Cyclone, earthquake, and miracle would seem to stalk hand-in-hand upon the screen; thunder and avalanche should play in the orchestra pit.
In such a picture, block after block of heavy old mansions would be seen to topple; row on row of stout buildings would vanish almost simultaneously; families would be shown in flight, carrying away their goods with them from houses about to crumble; miles of tall trees would be uprooted ”

“ She was not masculine yet, as her father said with the plaintive irascibility of a man who knows because he has suffered, she was imperious. “A man might as well be dead as bossed to death,” he often complained. And although she was a handsome creature and graceful, Harlan saw a dozen prettier girls at the new Country Club every day that he played golf there. Notwithstanding all this, she had only to let him see her again after years of absence, and at once his heart leaped, then ached, and he could think of nothing but this Martha who thought so little of himself. ”

“ The old gentleman made a slight, hostile duck with his head. “Pleased to meet ye, ma’am,” he said severely.
At that the bride seemed to be astonished. “What?” she said.
“I bid you good afternoon, ma’am,” he returned, ducked his head again, and passed on as rapidly as he could.
Martha whispered hurriedly to Dan: “She is beautiful!” and would have followed her father, but Dan detained her.
“Martha, will you help us to get her to like it here?” he said. “You see she’s such an utter stranger and everything’s bound to seem sort of different at first. ”

“ Whenever I do get one of your suits to look respectable, you wear it out to the farm and forget to put your overalls on, and then you climb trees, I suppose, or something else as destructive; and after that you rush off downtown where everybody sees you looking like the Old Scratch—that’s what your father said, and it troubles him, too, dear. You were so particular all through college, always just the very pink of fashion, and now, all of a sudden, you’ve changed the way some young men do when they’ve married and get careworn over having two or three babies at home. ”

“ With no discipline or respect for anything, and with such a mother from a petered-out stock, and a father that hasn’t got a practical thought in his head, you can just as well as not expect the child to be in the penitentiary by the time he’s twenty years old!” Then, as Harlan laughed, the old lady uttered a faint sound of laughter herself, not as if admitting that she exaggerated anything, however, but grimly. ”

“ Harlan winced a little under this sententious assault, and laughed at himself for wincing; then explained his rather painful laughter. “It’s almost amusing to me to find myself still cowering away from your humble-minded criticisms of me—just as I used to, Martha!”
“Yes, I know it,” she admitted. “I hate myself for the way I talk to you, Harlan;—somehow you always make me smug and superior. I’m the foolish kind of person who’s always made critical by superior criticism—critical of the critic, I mean.”
“But I’m not more critical of Dan than other people are. ”

“ Harlan returned somewhat brusquely; and Martha sat in silence, amused to perceive that her two callers had straightway resumed a tilting not infrequent when they met. A lady’s part was only to preside at the joust. “There’s only one definition of beauty,” Harlan added to his contradiction.
“What is it?”
“The one Athens believed in.”
“It won’t do for that brother of yours,” his antagonist returned. “The Greeks are dead, and you can’t tie Dan and his sort down to a dead definition. The growth isn’t beautiful to you, but it is to them, or else they wouldn’t make it. ”

“ For the growth came upon New York as it came upon the midland cities, and it produced a glutted monster, able to roar and heave and mangle, but not to digest or even to swallow the swarms that came begging to be devoured. ”

“ But more than that, Dan Oliphant looks up to you so worshipfully—he pictures you as such spotless perfection—it seems to me you’d just have to live up to his idea of you. If you want to know the truth, I took such a fancy to him I wasn’t too delighted on his account when I saw he was getting serious about you; but when he seemed to be so much so, I thought maybe it might turn out pretty well for both of you. It’s good sometimes for a man to have such ideals, and it’s always good for a woman to live up to ’em. ”

“ Harlan said. “Dan already thinks the baby’s perfect.”
“Happy, is he?”
“The usual triumphant young father. More triumphant than the usual one, I should say. He went whooping over the house till mother had to stop him and send him outdoors to keep him from disturbing Lena.”
“Yes; that’s like him,” the old lady said. “How queer it is; there are people who can always find something to whoop about, no matter what happens. Your grandfather was like that when he was a young man. Even when we were poor as Job’s turkey he’d burst out cackling and laughing over anything at all. ”