National Avenue · Chapter 21 (2/2)

“Of all the nonsense!” she protested, and continued to protest. She’d never heard anything so far-fetched in all her life, she declared⁠—people didn’t put such Machiavellian subtleties into their wills; and Harlan was a creative romanticist instead of the critic she’d always believed him to be. But his romancing wasn’t successful; it was too incredible.

He listened, skeptically marking the difference between the vehemence of the words she used and the lack of conviction in the voice that uttered them. “Never mind, Martha,” he said at last. “I see you believe it and agree with me.”

“I don’t,” she still protested; but her tone was now so feeble that it only proved her determined never to make the open admission of what she denied. “It would be too tragic.”

“Why?”

“To think of that poor old woman⁠—”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m afraid it must irritate her now if she knows.”

“To think of her⁠—” Martha said. “Poor thing! I mean it would be too tragic to think of her hoping and planning such⁠—such preposterousness!”

At this Harlan looked at her so sharply, so gravely, that he seemed to ask much more than appeared upon the surface of his question: “But would it be preposterous? Suppose Lena and Dan should⁠—”

“Separate?” she said, as he stopped at the word. “They never will.”

“But I asked you, if they should?”

Martha shook her head, smiling faintly; and she looked away from him⁠—far away, it seemed⁠—as she spoke. “People don’t stay ardently in love forever, Harlan. I don’t suppose anybody stays in love with anybody⁠—forever. I think I used to believe I’d always be in love with Dan, and in a way that was true⁠—whatever is left in me of the girl I used to be will always be in love with the boy he used to be. But I don’t know where that boy is any more. Do you understand?”

Harlan looked melancholy, as he nodded. “I suppose so.”

“I mean I’m true to my memory of him, perhaps. I’m afraid I don’t know just what I do mean.”

“I’m afraid I do, though,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s only that you’re hurt with him because Lena frightened him into keeping from even stepping over here for a minute to say, ‘Welcome home.’ ”

“No; it didn’t hurt⁠—not exactly,” she returned. “But he does seem changed.” She frowned. “Do you think he’s lost something, Harlan? Is it something⁠—something fine about him⁠—that’s lost? It seems to me⁠—it seems to me there must be. How could anybody expect a man to go through such a struggle for success as the one he’s been through and not bear the marks of it? Or maybe is it only his youthfulness he’s lost?”

“I don’t see anything missing,” Harlan replied. “He’s certainly not lost his optimistic oratory; he can still out-talk any man in town on the subject of Our Glorious Future. In fact, I think he’s even more that way than he used to be. Years ago he may have shown a few very faint traces of having been through a university, but you could sandpaper him to powder now and not find them: I don’t believe he could translate the first sentence of Caesar, or ‘Arma, virumque cano!’ The only things he ever talks about are his business and his boy and local politics. I think that’s all he can talk about.”

“Whereas,” Martha said, with a flash of the old championing, “the learned Mr. Harlan Oliphant has only to open his mouth in order to destroy a lonely woman’s whole joy in the Italian Renaissance.”

He lifted his hands, protesting, then dropped them in despair. “So I’ve lost it already!” he said. “And lost it in the old, old way!”

“Lost what?”

“Hope,” he explained. “You see I’m years and years older than Freddie Oliphant, and he was complaining to me the other day;⁠—he’s now considered so much ‘one of the older men’ that some of the pretty young things one sees at the Country Club were leaving him out of their festivities. You see where that puts me. So I hoped that when you came home⁠—”

“Yes?”

“Well, I hoped that maybe you and I shouldn’t quarrel any more, and⁠—”

“Quarrel? No; we mustn’t, indeed!” she said. “What else is there left for leftovers to do but to make the best of each other?”

“Nothing else, I’m afraid.”

“And I’d hoped,” he went on a little nervously;⁠—“I’d hoped maybe you’d let me see you a good deal⁠—that you’d let me take you places and⁠—”

“Good gracious!” Martha cried; and she laughed and blushed. “Haven’t you just taken me to church? Aren’t you already taking me places, Harlan?”