IN THE minds of Mrs. Savage’s neighbours across the street and of the
habitual passers-by, that broad plate-glass window where it was her
custom to sit for the last hour of every afternoon had come to bear the
significance of a glass over a portrait. All long thoroughfares and many
of even the shortest have such windows; and the people who repeatedly
pass that way will often find the portrait window becoming a part,
however slight, of their own lives; but it will seldom be an enduring
part, except as a fugitive, pathetic memory. For a time the silent old
face is seen framed there every day, or it may be a pale and wistful
child looking out gravely upon the noisy world. Then abruptly one day
the window is only a window and no more a portrait; the passer-by has a
moment of wonder whenever he goes by, but presently may have his faintly
troubled question answered by a wreath on the door; and afterwards the
window that was once a portrait will seem to him a little haunted.
Mrs. Savage’s window had been a portrait so long that even the school
children who went homeward that way in the autumn afternoons noticed a
vacancy behind the glass and missed her from the frame; but new seasons
came and passed, and no wreath appeared upon her door. 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. I suppose you
think it’s because I just want to eat a little more and to lie here
listening to that!” With a hand now become the very ghost of a hand, she
gestured toward a window where the parted curtains revealed black panes
slushed with noisy water by the strong west wind. “How you must wonder!”
“Oh, no,” Harlan said, though she spoke the truth. “I don’t wonder at
all, grandma.”
“Yes, you do! How could a young person help wondering about such a
thing? Year before last I could still go out for a little walk; last
year I could only go for a drive in the afternoons. After that I could
still get downstairs and sit by the window; then I couldn’t even do
that, and could only hobble around upstairs;—then I couldn’t even get
into another room without being helped. And now for a month I’ve not
been able to get out of bed—and I’ll never be able to. No wonder you
wonder I want to hang on!”
“But I don’t,” he insisted. “I don’t, indeed.”
“You do. What do you think I have to live for?”
“Why, partly for your family, grandma. We’re all devoted to you; and
besides you have your memories—I know you have many happy memories.”
She laughed feebly, but nevertheless with audible asperity, interrupting
his rather stumbling reassurances. “‘Happy memories!’ Young people are
always talking about ‘happy memories’; and they think old people ‘live
in their happy memories.’ I advise you not to look forward to spending
your old age in that way! There’s no such thing, young man.”
“No such thing as a happy memory?”
“Not when you’re as old as I am,” she said. “You can only have a happy
memory of something when you can look forward to something of the same
kind happening again; but I can’t look forward to anything. Yet I still
want to hang on!”
Harlan laughed gently. “Then doesn’t that prove you do look forward to
something, grandma?”
“No,” she said. “It only proves I still have a little curiosity. I’d
like to live twenty years just to prove I’m right about how this baby’s
going to turn out.”
The implication of her tone was grim with conviction—clearly she spoke
of a baby who could not turn out well—and Harlan was amused by his own
perception of a little drama: his grandmother, clinging with difficulty
to one extreme edge of life and prophesying only black doom for this new
person who had just crawled up into life over the opposite extreme edge.
“I’m sorry you feel so gloomy about that baby, grandma. I’m rather
pleased, myself, to be an uncle, and so far I haven’t been worrying
about his future. Don’t you think there’s a chance for him?”
“Not with such a mother and father,” the old lady promptly replied. “Dan
oughtn’t to have mixed with such a stock as that painted-up little
photograph girl.”
Harlan protested a little; coming to Lena’s defense at least in this
detail. “But I understand that the particular foible of the McMillan
family is the magnificence of their stock, as you call it, grandma. It
seems they’re so proud of it they don’t think of much else.”
“Yes; that’s always a sign a stock’s petered out. When people _put_ a
lot on what their folks used to do, it always means they haven’t got
gimp enough left to do anything themselves. The minute I laid eyes on
her picture I knew she came from a no-account stock; and when your
mother gave her that reception everybody in town could tell right off
what she was. Painted! _That_ tells the story!”
Again Harlan protested on behalf of his sister-in-law. “Oh, I shouldn’t
make too much of that, grandma. A little rouge now and then——”
“‘A little rouge!’” the old lady echoed satirically. “She was plastered
with it! That doesn’t make any difference though, because a woman that
uses it at all is a bad woman and wants the men to know it.”
“Oh, no, no!”
“It’s so,” the old lady cried as fiercely as her enfeebled voice
permitted. “It’s the truth, and you’ll live to see I’m right. I don’t
want you to forget then that I told you so. You remember it, Harlan.”
“Yes, grandma,” he said placatively. “I will if——”
“I don’t want any ‘if’ about it. You remember what I’m telling you!
She’s bad!” Mrs. Savage spoke so vehemently that she had to pause and
let her quickened breathing become more regular;—then she went on:
“Look how she’s treated me. If she’d had the right stuff in her, she’d
have been grateful to me for giving her a lesson. If she’d been just a
foolish girl who’d made a mistake and painted herself because she wanted
to look healthier when she met her new husband’s friends, why, she might
have got a little pettish with me for showing her it was a mistake the
way I did, but long before now she’d have forgiven me and thanked me for
doing it. Not she! That was the last time I set foot out of doors; and
has she ever come to see me? She’s never been near me! What’s more,
she’s done her best to keep Dan from ever coming here. When he _has_
come I know he hasn’t dared to tell her. Do you deny it?”
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.”
The old lady looked at her grandson querulously. “Don’t be so superior,
young man. That’s always been your trouble—you think you’re the only
perfect person in the world.” And when he would have protested,
defending himself, she checked him sharply and went on: “Never mind! I’m
talking about other things now. The trouble with Dan is that he’s never
seen anything as it really is and never will—not in all the days of his
life! He was that way even when he was a boy. I remember once you hurt
his feelings about some poor little brackets he was making with a little
Jew boy. He thought the brackets were perfect, and he thought the little
Jew boy was perfect, too. When you criticized them both he got into such
a spasm of crying he had to go home to bed.”
“Yes,” Harlan said, smiling faintly; “I remember. He was always like
that.”
“Yes, and always will be. So he’ll think this child of his is perfect,
and it’ll never get any discipline. I’d like to live twenty years just
to see the wrack and ruin that’s going to be made by these children born
nowadays. Their parents got hardly any discipline at all, and _they_
won’t get _any_, so they’ll never know how to respect anything at all.
It only takes a little common sense to see from the start how this
child’ll turn out. 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. “You’ll see!”
“You’re right about it this far,” 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. I used to just look at him and wonder. Dan’s
desperate for money, isn’t he?”
Harlan coughed, frowned, and then looked faintly amused. “Yes, I should
just about use the word ‘desperate.’ I think he is.”
“He’ll not get any of mine!” Mrs. Savage said. “I’d not be very apt to
help him anyhow, after the way his wife’s treated me. He wouldn’t listen
to me; he _would_ marry her, and he _would_ throw all he had away on
that miserable old farm! Now I guess he’s got nothing more to throw
away.”
“He’s got rather less than nothing now, grandma. The place wouldn’t sell
for enough to pay the mortgages, and he hasn’t been able to meet the
interest. Father managed to let him have a thousand dollars two months
ago, but it didn’t go very far. The truth is, I think Dan’s begun to be
a little out of his head over the thing;—he had twenty teams hauling
dirt while poor father’s thousand lasted. Now he’s going to lose the
place, and I’d think it a fortunate misfortune if I believed he’d learn
anything by it; but he won’t.”
“No,” Mrs. Savage agreed gloomily. “He’s like his grandfather, but he
hasn’t got a wife to watch over him as his grandfather had. He’ll just
be up to some new wastefulness.”
“He already is,” Harlan laughed. “You’re extraordinary, the way you put
your finger on things, grandma. He’s already up to a new wastefulness.”
“What is it?”
“Horseless carriages,” Harlan informed her. “Automobiles;—‘_les
autos_,’ I believe the French call them now. Since old Shelby wouldn’t
run a car line out to the farm, and the city council wouldn’t build a
street to the city boundary, and the county wouldn’t improve the road,
Dan’s got the really magnificent idea that his Ornaby place could be
reached by automobiles. He believes if the things could be made cheap
enough everybody that’s going to live in Ornaby Addition could own one
and go back and forth in it. And besides, he expects to build some
horseless omnibuses to run out there from town.”
“He expects to?” Mrs. Savage cried, aghast. “He’s just about to lose
everything, yet he expects to manufacture horseless carriages and
omnibuses?”
“Oh, yes,” Harlan said easily. “_He_ doesn’t know he’s bankrupt! To hear
him you’d think he’s just beginning to make his fortune and create great
public works.”
“Jehoshaphat!” In a few extremities during her long life Mrs. Savage had
sought an outlet for her emotions in this expression; and after using it
now she lay silent for some moments; then gave utterance to a dry little
gasp of laughter. “I guess it’s a good thing I’ve made a new will! Maybe
this girl might have sense enough to clear out.”
“Lena?” Harlan asked, for his grandmother’s voice was little more than a
whisper, as if she spoke to herself; and he was not sure of her words.
“Do you mean you think Lena might leave Dan?”
“If he didn’t have any money she might. What did she marry him for?
She’s _hated_ being married to him, hasn’t she? She must have believed
he had money.”
Harlan shook his head. “No,” he said thoughtfully;—“I don’t believe
she’s mercenary. I don’t think that’s why she married him.”
“Can’t you use your reason?” the old lady complained petulantly. “Hasn’t
she whined and scolded every minute since he brought her here?”
“Oh, it’s not so bad as that, grandma.”
“Your mother says she stays in her room for days at a time.”
“Yes, she gets spells when she’s moody—or at least just quiet,” Harlan
admitted. “But she’s not always in them by any means. She’s rather
amusing sometimes, and she seems to try to be kind to Dan.”
“Oh, she ‘seems to try?’” Mrs. Savage echoed. “_You_ seem to try to
stand up for her! Do you like her?”
Faced with this abrupt question, Harlan was somewhat disturbed. “Well,
possibly not,” he replied honestly, after a moment. “No, I can’t say I
do.”
“I thought not. And does she like any of you?”
“Well, she’s evidently rather fond of mother—and of father, too.”
“Who on earth could help liking _them_?” Mrs. Savage cried, and, in her
vehemence, seemed about to rise from her bed. “Do you think _that’s_ to
her credit? She hates everybody and everything _else_ here, and she nags
Dan. That means she thought he had money, and she married him for it,
and now she’s disappointed. Well, she’ll keep on being disappointed a
good while, so far as _my_ property is concerned! Then maybe she’ll have
sense enough to leave him and give him a chance to get the woman he
ought to’ve married in the first place.”
Harlan looked a little startled as his grandmother sank back, panting
with exhaustion; the spirit within her was too high and still too
passionate for the frail material left to it. The self of her was indeed
without age, unaltered, and as dominant as it had ever been, though the
instrument through which it communicated, her strengthless body, was
almost perished out of any serviceableness. To her grandson there came
an odd comparison: it seemed to him that she was like a vigorous person
shouting through an almost useless telephone that could make only the
tiniest, just perceptible sounds; and he had an odder thought than this:
When the telephone was entirely broken and silent would she still be
trying to shout through it? She would be shouting somewhere, he felt
sure. But what he said, rather sadly, was, “Martha? I suppose you mean
Martha Shelby?”
“Of course! Martha could make something out of Dan, and she’s never
looked at anybody but him, and she never will. You needn’t expect her
to, either, young man.”
Harlan’s colour heightened at this, and some shadows of sensitiveness
about his mouth became quickly more visible. “Oh, no; of course I
don’t,” he said quietly.
“She’ll never marry you,” the terrible old lady went on. “I know what
you’ve been up to—I’ve had my eyes about me—but you’ll never get her
to quit thinking of Dan. And if this painted-up photograph girl takes
her baby and goes away some day, things might have a chance to come out
right. But _you_, young man——” She stopped, beset by a little cough as
feeble as a baby’s, yet enough to check her; and upon this the
professional nurse who now took care of her appeared in the doorway and
gave Harlan the smiling glance that let him know his call had lasted
long enough.
He rose from his chair by the bedside, murmuring the appropriate
cheering phrases;—he was sure his grandmother would be stronger the
next time he came, and she would soon “get downstairs again,” he said;
while she looked up at him with a strange contemplation that he
sometimes remembered afterwards; she had so many times in her life said
to others what he was saying to her now. But she let him thus ease his
departure, and responded with only a faintly gasped, “We’ll hope so,”
and “Good-night.”
Though he bent over her, her voice was almost inaudible against the
sound of the rain spitefully hammering the windows; and in the light of
the single green-shaded bulb that hung above the table of tonics and
medicines at the foot of the bed, the whiteness of her face was almost
indistinguishable from the whiteness of the pillow. She was so nearly a
ghost, indeed, that as he touched the cold hand in farewell, it seemed
to him that if there were ghosts about—his grandfather, for
instance—she might almost as easily be communing with them as with the
living. She was of their world more than of this wherein she still
wished to linger.
Downstairs, the elderly negro who had served her so long waited to open
the door for the parting guest.
“You ought to brung you’ papa’s an’ mamma’s carri’ge, Mist’ Hollun,” he
said. “You goin’ git mighty wet, umbrella or no umbrella.”
“No doubt, Nimbus.”
“Yes, suh,” said Nimbus reflectively. “You goin’ swim. How you think
you’ grammaw feel to-night?”
“I’m afraid she’s not any stronger. I’m afraid she won’t be here much
longer.”
“No, suh?” The thin old man chuckled a little, as if to himself. “She
awready _did_ be here some few days! She stay li’l’ while yet, Mist’
Hollun.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, suh,” said Nimbus, chuckling again. “Same way as ’tis ’bout
anything else. Some people come call on you; stay li’l’ while; git up to
go, they walk right out. Some people, they set an’ set an’ set; then
when they git up to go, they don’t go; they keep on talk, talk, talk.
You grammaw she aw-ways do like that. She goin’ take her time before she
walk out the big door.”
“I hope so,” Harlan said, as Nimbus unfastened the old-fashioned brass
door-chain for him. “I hope so, indeed.”
“Yes, suh; she take her own time,” the coloured man insisted;—then,
opening the door, he stood aside and inclined himself in a bow that
obviously gave him a satisfaction more than worth the effort. “I expeck
she do you well, Mist’ Hollun.”
“What?” Harlan asked, pausing to unfurl the umbrella he had left just
outside. “What did you say, Nimbus?”
“I mean: What she goin’ do with all that propaty?” Nimbus explained.
“Door she goin’ out of when she git ready, it’s a mighty big door, but
’tain’t big enough to tote all that propaty with her—no, suh! I expeck
you goin’ git mighty big slice all that propaty, Mist’ Hollun. Goo’ ni’,
suh.”
Harlan laughed, bade him good-night, and strode forward into the gusty
water that drove through the darkness. Outside the gate, as he turned
toward home, he laughed again, amused by the old negro’s view of things,
but not amused by the things themselves. Harlan knew that he had never
won his grandmother’s affection; her thought had always been of his
brother and was still of Dan now, as she lay upon the bed from which she
would never rise. Whatever the terms of her new will might be, and
whatever their actual consequences, she had made it clear that they were
at least designed for Dan’s ultimate benefit.
Harlan had little expectation of any immediate benefit to himself,
notwithstanding the lively hints of Nimbus; nor were his hopes greater
than his expectations. He had no wish to supplant his brother.