DAN walked home from his grandmother’s with the wind blowing a fine snow
against his chest, within which something seemed to be displaced and
painful. Higher up, under the cold sleek band of his tall hat, there was
a stricken puzzlement; and no doubt he was in hard case. For a young
lover rebuffed upon speaking of his sweetheart is like a fine artist who
has made some fragile, exquisite thing and offers it confidently in
tender pride, only to see it buffeted and misprized. To Dan it seemed as
though Lena herself had been injuriously mishandled, whereas the injury
fell really upon something much more delicate; the lovely image he had
made for himself and thought was Lena—an angelic substance most
different from the substance of that “little brunette” herself.
He told himself that his grandmother had increased in unreasonableness
with increasing age, but in spite of all efforts to reassure himself,
and notwithstanding her prediction that he would receive a foolish
support from his parents in the matter of his engagement, it was
decidedly without jauntiness that he made his announcement to them after
dinner that evening.
He found them in the library, a shadowy big room where the fire of soft
coal twinkled again upon polished dark woodwork, upon the clear glass
doors of the bookcases, and touched with rose the eye-glasses and the
shining oval façade of Harlan’s shirt as he sat reading Suetonius under
a tall lamp in the bay window. Harlan, unlike his father and his
brother, always “dressed” for dinner.
He was the thinner and perhaps an inch the shorter of the two brothers;
but in spite of their actual likeness of contour, people who knew them
most intimately sometimes maintained that there was not even an outward
resemblance, so sharp was the contrast in manner and expression. It was
Martha Shelby who said that if Harlan had been a year shipwrecked and
naked on a savage isle he would still look fastidious and wear “that
same old ‘How-vulgar-everything-seems-to-be!’ expression.” Tramps
approaching Harlan on the street to beg a dime from him usually decided
at the last moment to pass on in philosophic silence.
He was no more like the two handsome, gray-haired people who sat by the
library fire, that evening, than he was like his brother. Mr. Oliphant,
genial and absent-minded, was the very man of whom any beggar would make
sure at first sight; and he was without an important accumulation of
fortune now, in fact, because venturous friends of his had too often
made sure of him to go on a note or to forestall a bankruptcy that
eventually failed to be forestalled. His wife was not the guardian to
save him from a disastrous generosity; she was the most ready woman in
the world to be recklessly kind, and when kindness brought losses she
kept as sunny a heart as her husband did.
Mrs. Savage was right: from this pair no discipline for the good of
their son’s future need have been expected, although her own effect upon
him had been so severe that he began his announcement in the library
with a defensive formality that denoted apprehension. His formality,
moreover, was elaborate enough to be considered intricate, with the
result that his surprised listeners were at first not quite certain of
his meaning.
His father withdrew slippered feet from close intimacy with the brass
fender enclosing the hearth, stared whimsically at his son, and
inquired: “What is it all about, Dan?”
“Sir?”
“It doesn’t quite penetrate,” Mr. Oliphant informed him. “You seem to be
making an address, but I’m not secure as to its drift. I gather that you
believe something about there coming a time in a young man’s life when
his happiness depends upon an important step, and you’d hate to be
deprived of something or other. You said something, too, about a union.
It didn’t seem to connect with labour questions, so I’m puzzled. Could
you clarify my mind?”
Harlan, resting his book in his lap, laughed dryly and proffered a
suggestion: “It sounds to me, sir, as if he might possibly mean a union
with a damsel of marriageable age and propensities.”
“Dan!” the mother cried. “Is that what you mean?”
“Yes’m,” he said meekly. “I wanted to tell you last night, but—well,
anyway it’s so. She’s the most splendid, noblest, finest girl I ever
met, and I know you’ll think so, too. Here—well, here’s her picture.”
And he handed the blue case to Mrs. Oliphant.
“Why, Dan!” she said, suddenly tearful, as she took the case and held it
open before her.
Her husband, not speaking, got up quickly, came behind her and looked
over her shoulder at the photograph of Lena. Then after a moment he
looked at Dan, but for a time seemed to be uncertain about what he ought
to say. “She’s—ah—she’s pretty enough, Dan,” he said finally, in his
kind voice. “She’s certainly pretty enough for us to understand your
getting this way about her.”
“Yes, Dan,” his mother agreed. “She—she’s quite pretty. I’m sure she’s
pretty.”
“She’s beautiful!” Dan declared huskily. “She’s beautiful, and she’s
more than that; she has a character that’s perfect. She has an
absolutely perfect character, mother.”
“I hope so,” Mrs. Oliphant said gently, bending her head above the blue
case. “After all, you can’t tell everything from a photograph.” She
looked up at her husband as if arguing with him. “You _can’t_ tell much
from a photograph.”
“No,” he assented readily. “Of course you can’t. In fact, you can tell
very little; but you can see this is a pretty girl, anyhow. I expect
you’d better tell us a little more about her, Dan.”
Dan complied. That is to say, he did his best to make them comprehend
Lena’s perfection; and, touching lightly upon her descent from that
somewhat shadowy figure in heroic antiquity, General McMillan—Dan felt
sensitive for the general since Mrs. Savage’s suggestion about the
Knights of Pythias—he kept as much as possible to the subject of Lena
herself, and ended by declaring rather oratorically that she had just
the qualities he had always admired in the noblest women.
“I do hope so, Dan dear,” his mother said, her eyes still shining with
tears in the firelight. “I do hope so!”
“Yes,” Mr. Oliphant agreed, “I hope so, too, Dan; and anyhow, if you’ve
cared enough about her to ask her to marry you, that’s the main thing.
You can be sure your mother and father will do their best to be fond of
anybody you’re fond of.”
“But she _has_ those qualities, father,” Dan said, not quite sure,
himself, why he seemed to be insisting upon this in a tone so
plaintively argumentative. “Indeed she has! She has just exactly the
qualities I’ve always admired in the noblest women I’ve ever known.”
“In grandma, for instance?” Harlan inquired.
“What?”
“You said she had just the qualities you’ve observed in the noblest
women. Well, grandma has noble qualities. I was wondering——”
“No,” Dan said, swallowing. “Lena—well, she’s different.”
“If she has the qualities that will help you in building your future,”
Mrs. Oliphant said, “that will be enough for us.”
“She has, mother. Those are just exactly the qualities she’s got. Don’t
you think when—when——” He faltered, obviously in timidity, and
glanced nervously at the observant Harlan.
“When what, dear?”
“Well, when—when a wife’s an—an inspiration,” he said, gulping the
word out;—“well, isn’t that just everything?”
“Of course, dear,” Mrs. Oliphant said comfortingly. Then, when she had
touched her eyes with her lace-edged little handkerchief, she spoke more
briskly. “This will be quite exciting news for your grandmother, Dan.
Poor dear woman! She’s been waiting so anxiously for you to come home;
and she’s grown so frail these last few months; she kept saying she was
afraid she wouldn’t last till you got here. She’s devoted to Harlan, of
course, but I think you’ve always been a little her favourite, Dan.”
“A little?” Harlan repeated serenely. “She really doesn’t like me at
all.”
“Oh, yes, she does,” his mother protested. “She’s devoted to you, too,
but she——”
“No,” Harlan interrupted quietly; “she’s never liked me. I have no doubt
when her will is read you’ll find it out.”
But upon this his father intervened cheerfully. “Let’s don’t talk about
her will just yet,” he said. “She’s going to be with us a long time, we
hope. Dan, you’d better go and tell her your news to-morrow.”
“I did, sir. I went this afternoon.”
“What did she say?”
Dan passed his hand across his forehead. “Well—she—well, I told her
about it and—well, you know how she _is_, sir. She—isn’t apt to get
enthusiastic about hardly anything. She seemed to think—well, one thing
she seemed to think was that I’m sort of young to be gettin’ married.”
“Well, maybe,” said his father. “Maybe she’s right.”
“No, sir, I don’t believe so. You see grandma is almost ninety-three.
Why, to a person of that age almost anybody else looks pretty young. You
see, it isn’t so much I _am_ young; it’s only I look young to grandma.”
But upon this argument, delivered in a tone most hopeful of convincing,
Mr. Oliphant laughed outright. “So that’s the way of it!” he exclaimed,
and, returning to his seat by the fire, again extended his feet to the
fender. “Well, whether you’re really a little too young or only appear
so, on account of your grandmother’s advanced age, we have to face the
fact that you’ve asked this young lady to marry you, and she’s said she
will. When that’s happened, all the old folks can do is to make the best
of it. You know we’ll do that, don’t you, son?”
“Yes, sir,” Dan said a little bleakly. “I knew you would.” He took the
blue case from his mother’s lap, and kissed her as she looked
pathetically up at him; then he moved toward the door. “I—I always knew
I could count on you and mother, sir.”
“Yes, Dan,” Mrs. Oliphant murmured, “you know you can.”
And her husband, from his chair by the fireside, echoed this with a
heartiness that was somewhat husky: “Yes, indeed, Dan. If the young lady
is necessary to your happiness——”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why, we’ll just try to say, ‘God bless you both,’ my boy.”
“Yes, sir,” Dan returned, with an inadequacy that he seemed to feel,
himself, for he lingered near the doorway some moments more, coughed in
a futile and unnecessary manner, then said feebly: “Well—well, thank
you,” and retired slowly to his own room.
When his steps were no longer heard ascending the broad stairway, the
sound of a quick sob, too impulsive to be smothered, was heard in the
silent library, and Mr. Oliphant turned to stare at his wife. “Well,
what’s the matter?” he said. “I told you, you can’t tell anything from a
photograph, didn’t I?”
She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes and shook her head, offering no
other response.
Thereupon he struck the poker into the fire, badgered a lump of coal,
and said gruffly: “It’s all nonsense! She may turn out to be the finest
girl in the world. How can you tell anything from a photograph?”
“You can’t much,” the serene Harlan agreed. He spoke from his easy-chair
in the bay window, whither he had returned from an unemotional excursion
to the blue leather case when it was exhibited. “You can see, though,
that Dan’s young person is perfect, as he said, in several ways.”
“Think so?”
“Yes; she’s perfectly _à la mode_; she’s perfectly pretty—and perfectly
what we usually call shallow.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Don’t you?” Harlan asked, with a slight amusement, and added
reflectively: “Martha Shelby won’t like this much, I dare say.”
“No,” Mrs. Oliphant said faintly. “Poor Martha!”
“Oh, look here!” her husband remonstrated. “What’s the use of all this?
You’re acting as if we were facing a calamity. Dan’s got a mighty good
head on his shoulders; he wouldn’t fall in love with a mere little
goose. Besides, didn’t I ask you: ‘What can you tell from a
photograph?’”
“Not everything, sir,” Harlan interposed. “But you can usually get an
idea of the type of person it’s a photograph of.”
“Yes, you can,” Mrs. Oliphant said. “That’s what frightens me. She
doesn’t seem the type that would want to take care of him when he’s sick
and be interested in his business and help him. She might even be the
type that wouldn’t like living here, after New York, and would get to
complaining and want to take him away. Of course it _is_ true we can’t
tell from that photograph, though.”
“Can’t you?” Harlan asked with a short laugh. “Then why are you so
disturbed by it?”
“That’s sense,” his father said approvingly. “If you can’t tell anything
about her, what’s the sense of worrying?”
“It doesn’t appear that you got my point, sir,” Harlan remarked. “You
and mother are both disturbed because you _have_ drawn certain
conclusions.”
“From that picture?”
“I think so, sir.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” Mr. Oliphant returned testily. “Nobody can
tell anything at all from a photograph. Not a thing!”
“No,” Mrs. Oliphant agreed, wiping her eyes again. “I hope not. I mean
I’m _sure_ not.”
“That’s right,” said her husband heartily. “That’s the way to look at
it.”
“Yes; isn’t it!” said the sardonic Harlan, as he resumed his reading;
and for a time the library was given over to a reflective silence;—the
ceiling, fifteen feet from the floor, was too solid a structure for the
pacing that had begun overhead to be heard below.
Up and down his room Dan walked and walked. In the few contemporary
novels that he had read the hero’s acceptance by a beautiful girl
implied general happiness on earth; all the difficulties of mankind
seemed to disappear with the happy elimination of those of this
favourite twain. Moreover, when friends of his had become engaged there
was always joviality; there were congratulations and eager gayeties;
there were friendly chaffings from the old stock of jokes on the shelves
that afford generation after generation supplies of such humour.
Sometimes, as he was growing up, he had thought vaguely of the time when
he would be telling people of his own engagement; he had made in his
mind momentary sketches of himself, proud, happy, laughing, and a little
embarrassed, in a circle of his relatives and friends who would be
clamorous with loud felicitations and jocose inquiries. This very vision
had come to him on his journey home so vividly that he had chuckled
aloud suddenly, in his berth at night, surprising and somewhat abashing
himself with the sound.
The picture had not been a successful prophecy he perceived as he walked
up and down in his dressing-gown and slippers. Something appeared to
have gone wrong somewhere in a mysterious way; and he could not
understand what it was, could only pace and grieve, and puzzle himself.
Even his talk with Martha Shelby had lacked the stimulating gayety he
expected, though she had been “mighty sweet and sympathetic,” as he
thought; and as for the interview with his grandmother, he must simply
try to forget that! So he told himself, and shivered abruptly, recalling
the awfulness of her parting instructions. His mother and father had
been kind—“just lovely”—but with them, too, something important had
been lacking; he could not think why; and so walked and walked without
much satisfaction or relief.
An hour after he had left the library there was a knock on his door; and
he opened this tall and heavily panelled walnut barrier to admit his
father, who looked a little worried.
“Dan,” he said, coming in;—“I’m afraid I’ve got to get you to do
something that won’t be much fun for you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your aunt Olive’s just telephoned me she’s in a little trouble
to-night.”
“Yes, sir,” Dan repeated. His aunt Olive, his father’s widowed
sister-in-law, was often in a little trouble of one kind or another, and
the Oliphant family had learned to expect a call for help when she
telephoned to them. “Yes, sir. Does she want me?”
“Guess she does,” his father said. “Both the children took sick at the
same time yesterday morning, she says. Mabel seems to be getting along
all right, but Charlie’s in a high fever. You see there’s an epidemic of
la grippe all over town—that’s what’s the matter with ’em, the doctor
thinks; but so many people have got it she can’t find a nurse to save
her life. Says she’s hunted high and low and there simply isn’t one to
be had, and it seems Charlie’s delirious; and he’s strong, for fourteen;
it’s hard to keep him in bed. I offered to go myself, but she said she’d
heard you were back in town, so she wondered if you wouldn’t come over
and sit up with him just a night or so until she——”
“You tell her I’ll be right there.” Dan had thrown off his dressing-gown
and was in a chair, drawing on a shoe. “Tell her——”
“I told her so. You needn’t break your neck getting over there, Dan. I
don’t think there’s any particular hurry. She just said——”
“I know, sir. She gets scared about Charlie mighty easy; but still I
might as well move along, I guess,” Dan said, and continued the hurried
resumption of his clothes.
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.