National Avenue · Chapter 4 (2/2)

Mrs. Savage put on the eyeglasses she wore fastened to a thin chain round her neck, and examined the photograph of Lena McMillan. She looked at it steadily for a long minute, then handed it back to her grandson, removed her glasses, and, without a word, again folding her hands in her lap, looked out of the window.

Under these discomfiting circumstances Dan said, as hopefully as he could, “You’ve changed your mind now, haven’t you, grandma?”

“On account of that picture?” she asked, without altering her attitude.

“Yes. Don’t you think she’s⁠—don’t you think she’s⁠—”

“Don’t I think she’s what?” Mrs. Savage inquired in a dead voice.

“Don’t you think she’s perfect?”

“Perfect?” Expressionlessly, she turned and looked at him. “What are your plans, Dan?”

“You mean, when do we expect to⁠—”

“No. What business are you going into?”

“Well⁠—” He paused doubtfully; “I still hope⁠—I mean, if I don’t have to go to New York to live⁠—”

“So?” she interrupted with seeming placidity. “She declines to come here to live, does she? She hates it here, does she, already?”

“I don’t think she would,” he said quickly. “Not if she once got used to it. You see she doesn’t know anything about it; she’s never been west of Rochester, and she only thinks she wouldn’t like it. I’ve been doin’ my best to persuade her.”

“But you couldn’t?”

“Oh, I haven’t given up,” he said. “I think when the time comes⁠—”

“But if she won’t, ‘when the time comes,’ ” Mrs. Savage suggested;⁠—“then instead of living here, where you’ve grown up and want to live, you’ll go and spend your life in New York. Is that it?”

“Well, I⁠—”

“So you’d do it,” she said, “just to please the face in that photograph!”

“You don’t understand, grandma,” he returned, and he hurriedly passed a handkerchief across his distressed forehead. “You see, it isn’t only Lena herself don’t think much of our part of the country. You see, her family⁠—”

“Ah!” the grim lady interrupted. “She’s got a family, has she? Indeed?”

“Great goodness!” he groaned, “I mean her father and mother and her sister and her aunts and her married sister, and everybody. They’re important people, you see.”

“Are they? What do they do that’s important?”

“It isn’t so much what they do exactly,” he explained, “it’s what they are. You see, they’re descended from General McMillan and⁠—”

“General McMillan? Never heard of him. What was he a general of? New York militia? Knights of Pythias, maybe?”

“I’m not exactly certain,” Dan admitted, again applying his handkerchief to his forehead. “I think he had something to do with history before the Revolution. I don’t know just what, but anyhow they all feel it was pretty important; and you see to them, why I’m just nobody at all, and of course they must feel I’m pretty crude. It’s true, too, because I am crude compared to Lena; and for a good while her family were more or less against any such engagement. Of course, the way they think about my family is even worse than the way you think about them, grandma; and naturally she says herself they’re positive it’d be a terrible sacrifice for her to come and live out here. I mean that’s the way they look at it.”

“Of course they do,” said Mrs. Savage. “That’s the way those New York people at Saratoga thought about this part of the country. They’re just the same nowadays, I told you; they haven’t got the kind of brains that can learn anything. Does this photograph girl herself talk about what a ‘sacrifice’ it would be for her to live here?”

“Lena McMillan is a noble girl,” Dan informed her earnestly. “She feels a lot of respect for her family’s wishes, and besides she doesn’t like the idea of leavin’ New York herself; but I don’t remember her usin’ the word ‘sacrifice’ exactly. She doesn’t put it that way.”

“What about you? Do you put it that way? Do you think it would be a sacrifice for her to come and live here?”

“I?” Dan was obviously astonished to be asked such a question. “Why, my goodness!” he exclaimed, “I wouldn’t be beggin’ her to try it if I thought so, would I? If I can just get her to try it I know she’ll like it. How could anybody help likin’ it?”

“You’re pretty liable to find out how this photograph girl will help it!” his grandmother prophesied, and promptly checked him as he began to protest against her repeated definition of Lena as “this photograph girl.” She retorted, “Tut, tut!” as a snub to his protest, then inquired: “What business do you expect to go into, if you live in New York?”

“I don’t know,” he said gloomily. “I don’t see what I could do there.”

“What will you do if you stay here?”

At that he brightened instantly. “Why, I think I’ve got hold of a big idea, grandma. I began to think about it last September, and it’s been in my mind all the time I was away;⁠—I’ve been goin’ over it and workin’ it out. It’s something would make a mighty good profit for me and at the same time I think it’d be a big thing for this city.”

“Indeed?” she said. “Yes, you’re at the age when everything looks like a ‘big thing.’ Your grandfather used to talk like that when we were first married.”

“Well, he was one of this city’s most successful men, wasn’t he? He did do big things, didn’t he?”

“That was in the early days when he kept us poor,” she said, with a short laugh of extreme dryness. “He had ideas about going into things to make this a greater city, and get ‘a mighty good profit’ for himself, the way you talk now⁠—but what finally made his money was keeping out of big schemes. It was what I kept him from doing that made us well off, not what he did. We saved and went into safe things like the First National Bank stock. When it comes to you and Harlan, after I’m gone, you mustn’t ever sell that bank stock, Dan. What is this ‘big idea’ you spoke of?”

“It’s the old Ornaby farm, grandma.”

“Oh, I see,” she assented with ready satire. “Yes; this photograph girl will make a fine farmer’s wife!”

“No, she won’t,” he returned good-naturedly. “That farm lies right where this city’s bound to grow to. I want to take the money grandpa left me and buy it. Then I’ll lay it out in lots and make an Addition of it.”

“So?” she said. “That’s the ‘big idea,’ is it?”

“That’s it, grandma.”

She shook her head in pitying skepticism. “You can’t carry it out. In the first place, the town’ll never grow that far out⁠—”

“Yes, it will,” he interrupted eagerly. “Why, in three years at the longest⁠—”

“No,” she said; “it won’t. Not in three years and not in thirty. Anyhow, your grandfather only left you twenty-five thousand dollars. You’d better keep it and not throw it away, Dan.”

“I can get the Ornaby farm for seventeen thousand,” he informed her. “That’ll leave eight thousand to clear off the lots and put asphalt streets through and⁠—”

“Put asphalt streets through!” she echoed. “How many miles of asphalt streets do you expect to build with eight thousand dollars after you’ve cleared the lots and advertised enough to boom an Addition?”

“I’ve been hopin’ I’d get help on that,” he said, his colour heightening a little. “I thought maybe I could get Harlan to come in with the twenty-five thousand grandpa left him. If he does⁠—”

“He won’t. Harlan isn’t the kind to risk anything. He won’t.”

“Well, then,” Dan said, “I’ll go ahead and get other people. I’m goin’ to do it, grandma, if I have to take an ax and a shovel and a wheelbarrow out there and do it all by myself. I’ve been thinkin’ it over a long time, and I know it’s a big thing.” He laughed a little at his own enthusiasm, but again declared, with earnest determination: “Yes, ma’am! I’m goin’ to build ‘Ornaby Addition.’ ”

But his grandmother’s compassionate skepticism was not lessened. On the contrary, she asked him quietly: “You’re going to build Ornaby Addition at the same time you expect to be living in New York with this photograph girl for a wife? How do you think you’ll manage it, Dan?”

“Oh, she’ll come here,” he said. “I know she will, when I make her see what a big chance this idea of mine gives us. I think I can get her to try it, anyhow; and if she’ll just do that it’ll come out all right.”

“You think she’ll be a great help to you, do you, while you’re working with a wheelbarrow out on Ornaby’s farm?”

“Do I?” he exclaimed, and added radiantly: “ ‘A help?’ Why, grandma, she⁠—she’ll be a great deal more than a help; she’ll be an inspiration! That’s exactly what she’ll be, grandma.”

Old Mrs. Savage looked at him fixedly, sighed, and spoke as in a reverie. “Ah, me! How many, many young men I’ve seen believing such things in my long time here! How many, many I’ve seen that were going to do big things, and how many that thought some no-account girl was going to be their inspiration!”

“Grandma!” he cried indignantly, and rose from his chair. “You haven’t any right to speak of her like that.”

“No right?” she said quietly. “No, I s’pose not. I wonder how many hundred times in my life I’ve been told I hadn’t any right to speak the truth. It must be so.”

“But it isn’t the truth,” Dan protested, and in a plaintive agitation he moved toward the door. “I showed you a photograph of the sweetest, noblest, most beautiful woman that’s ever come into my life, and you speak of her as⁠—as⁠—well, as you just did speak of her, grandma! I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world, but I⁠—well, you aren’t fair. I don’t want to say any more than that, so I expect I better go.”

“Wait!” she said sharply; and he halted in the doorway. “You wait a minute, young man. I’m going to say my last say to you, and you better listen!”

“Yes, of course I will, if you want me to, grandma,” he assented, as he came back into the room and stood before her. “Only I hope you won’t say anything against her; and I don’t think you ought to call it your ‘last say’ to me. I’m sure you won’t stop speakin’ to me.”

“Won’t I?” she asked; and he was aware of a strange pathos in her glance, and that her head constantly shook a little. “Won’t I? I’m going to stop speaking to everybody, Dan, before long.”

“But you look so well, grandma; you oughtn’t to talk like that.”

“Never mind. My talking is about over, but I’m going to tell you something you may remember when I can’t talk any more at all. Your father and mother won’t even try to have any influence with you; they haven’t raised their children the way I did mine. Your father and mother have always been too easygoing with you to really help you by disciplining you when you wanted to do anything wrong, and they’ll both act the gentle fool with you now, just as they always have about everything. They won’t stop you from going ahead with this photograph girl.”

“No,” Dan said gently;⁠—“and nothing could stop me, grandma. I told you she’s the finest, most beautiful⁠—”

“Be quiet!” the old lady cried. “How much of that same sort of twaddle do you suppose a body’s heard in a life of ninety-two years? How many times do you suppose I’ve had to listen to just such stuff? Good heavens!”

“But, grandma⁠—”

“You listen to me!” she said with sudden ferocity. “You don’t know anything about the girl, and you don’t know anything about yourself. At your age you don’t know anything about anything. You don’t even know you don’t know. And another thing you don’t know is, how much you’ve told me about this girl and her family without knowing it.”

“Grandma, I told you they’re fine people and⁠—”

“Fine people!” she said bitterly. “Oh, yes! And how have they treated you?”

“Why, aren’t they givin’ me their⁠—their dearest treasure? Doesn’t that show how they⁠—”

“Yes, doesn’t it?” she interrupted. “It shows how much of a treasure they think she is!”

“Grandma⁠—”

“You listen! 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 laughed despairingly. “I haven’t been truckling to anybody.”

“You have, and she’ll keep you at it all your life!” the old lady said angrily. “I know what that face means. I’ve seen a thousand just like it! She’ll use you and make you truckle to be used! And if you give in to her and live in her town, she’ll despise you. If you make her come and live in your town, she’ll hate you. But she’ll always keep you truckling. Your only chance is to get rid of her.”

“Grandma,” he said desperately;⁠—“I’m sorry, but I can’t hear you talk this way about the sweetest, the most perfect, the loveliest⁠—”

“Get rid of her!” she cried. And as the distressed young man went out into the hall she leaned forward in her chair, shaking at him a piteously bent and emaciated forefinger. “You get rid of her, if you don’t want to die in the gutter! Get rid of her!”