SHE was right; the growth was now visibly upon the pleasant and
substantial town, where all had once appeared to be so settled and so
finished; for, just as with some of man’s disorders that develop slowly,
at first merely hinting in mild prophetic symptoms, then becoming more
sinister, and attacking one member after another until the whole body
writhes and alters, so it is with this disorder that comes racking the
midland towns through distortions and turmoil into the vaster likenesses
of cities: haphazard and insignificant destructions begin casually, but
gradually grow more sweeping and more violent until the victim town
becomes aware of great crashings;—and then lies choking in a cloud of
dust and smoke wherein huge new excrescences appear.
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. 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; the earth would gape, opening in great holes and long
chasms;—the very streets would unskin themselves and twist in agony;
every landmark would fly dispersed in powder upon the wind, and all
old-established things disappear.
Such a picture would be but the truth with time condensed;—that is to
say, the truth made like a man’s recollection of events—and yet it
would not be like the truth as the truth appeared to Daniel Oliphant and
the other men who made the growth, nor like their subsequent memories.
For these men saw, not the destruction, but only the city they were
building; and they shouted their worship of that vision and were
exultant in the uproar. They shouted as each new skyscraper rose
swimming through the vast drifts of smoke, and shouted again as the
plain, clean, old business streets collapsed and the magnificent and
dirty new ones climbed above the ruins. They shouted when business went
sweeping outward from its centre, tearing away the houses where people
had lived contentedly for so long; and they shouted again as the new
factory suburbs marched upon the countryside, far and wide, and the
colossal black plumes of new chimneys went undulating off into a
perpetual smoke-mist, so that the distant level plain seemed to be a
plain surrounding not a city, but an ever-fuming volcano.
Once again, in the interminably cycling repetition of the new displacing
the old, then becoming the old and being displaced in turn, an old order
was perishing. The “New Materialism” that had begun to grow with the
renewed growing of the country after the Civil War, and staggered under
the Panic of ’73, but recovered and went on growing egregiously, had
become an old materialism now. It had done great things and little
things. Amongst the latter, it had furnished Europe with a caricature
type of the American—the “successful American business man.” On the
shelf, beside the figure of the loud-tweeded Boxing Briton with his
“side whiskers,” Europe set the lank-and-drawling, chin-bearded,
palace-buying Boaster of the Almighty Dollar, the Yankee of the great
boom period.
That had been a great railroad-making and railroad-breaking period; the
great steel period; the great oil period; the great electric-invention
period; the great Barnum-and-Bunkum period; the period of “corrupt
senators”; of reform; and of skyscrapers thirty stories high. All this
was old now, routed by a newer and more gorgeous materialism. The old
had still its disciplines for the young and its general appearance of
piety; bad children were still whipped sometimes, and the people of best
reputation played no games on Sunday, but went to church and seemed to
believe in God and the Bible with almost the faith of their fathers. But
many of these people went down with their falling houses; a new society,
swarming upward above the old surfaces, became dominant. It began to
breed, among other things, a new critic who attacked every faith, and
offered, instead of mysteries, full knowledge of all creation as merely
a bit of easily comprehended mechanics. 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. Hard times and
prosperity were all one to it;—it marched, and so did its chief herald
and those who went shouting before it with him, while the “old
conservative business men,” the Shelbys and Rowes and John P. Johnses,
sat shaking their heads and muttering “Gamblers!”
Gamblers, or destroying angels, or prophets, whatever they were, they
went trampling forward in thunder and dust. The great Sheridan, of the
Trust Company and the Pump Works, had joined them. Unscrupulous and
noisiest of the noisy, he was like a war band drumming and brassily
trumpeting with the vanguard. There was Eugene Morgan who had begun
building the “Morgan Car” when automobiles were a joke, and now puffed
forth from his long lanes of shops black smoke that trailed off
unendingly to the horizon that it dimmed. Pendleton, of the new
“Pendleton Tractor,” marched with these, and old Sam Kohn and Sol Kohn
and Sam Kohn, Junior—the Kohns were tearing down the Amberson Block,
the very centre and business temple of the old town, the corner of
National Avenue and First Street—and there were the Rosenberg Brothers,
apartment builders who would buy and obliterate half a dozen solid old
houses at a time. There were the Schmidts, the Reillys, the younger
Johnsons, third generation of the old firm of Abner Johnson’s Sons, and
there were the Caldinis, the Comiskeys, and the Hensels, as well as all
the never-resting optimists who had come to the town from farms and
villages to blast it into nothingness and build their own city and build
themselves into it.
In the din of all the tearing down and building up, most of the old
family names were not heard, or were heard but obscurely, or perhaps in
connection with misfortunes; for many of the old families were
vanishing. They and their fathers and grandfathers had slowly made the
town; they had always thought of it as their own, and they had expected
to sit looking out upon it complacently forever from the plate glass of
their big houses on National Avenue and the two other streets parallel
to the avenue and nearest it. They had built thick walls round
themselves, these “old families,” not only when they built the walls of
their houses, but when they built the walls encircling their close
association with one another. The growth razed all these walls; the
“sets” had resisted the “climbers,” but the defences fell now; and those
who had sheltered behind them were dispersed, groping for one another in
the smoke.
It was Dan Oliphant who began the destruction of National Avenue. Among
the crumbling families were the Vertreeses;—they retired to what was
left of their country estate, which had already been overtaken by the
expanding town and compressed to half an acre. Dan bought the old
Vertrees Mansion on National Avenue, tore it down and built upon its
site a tremendous square box of concrete fronted with glass—the “sales
building” of the “Ornaby Four, the Car of Excellent Service.” This was
just across the street from where his grandmother had lived, and Harlan
protested long and loudly; but Dan was too busy to give his brother a
complete attention. He said mildly that his new building seemed at least
an improvement upon the shabby boarding-house, which the Vertrees
Mansion had become when he bought it; and, when Harlan hotly denied the
improvement, Dan sat listening with an expression of indulgence, the
while occupying his mind with computations concerning other matters.
For, as Martha had felt, these were his great days, and he was “in on”
everything. The Earl of Ornaby was earl of more than Ornaby now; Ornaby
and the “Ornaby Four” were but two of the adventurous fleets he had at
sea. He was “in on” a dozen “promotions” at once; “in on” the stock of
new “industrials”; inventors and exploiters lived at his office doors.
And although all of his fellow-hustlers used the phrase, none could say
“my city” with a greater right than he. When he began one of his
boostings with, “I believe first of all in my own city,” the voice of a
religion was heard. He was his city; he was its spirit, and more than
any other he was its guide, and yet its slave and worshipper. He could
not speak of it except with reverence, nor go on speaking of it long
unless he made the eagle scream.
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. Meanwhile, as he balanced and tossed the glittering and
ponderous things through the air, the rest of the deafening show went
on; the hustling and booming and boosting moving round and round him in
clouds of dust to the sound of brass bands, while crowds gazed
marvelling up at the juggler, and admired and envied him.
Of all the admirers who now looked up to him, cheering, probably the
most enthusiastic was his brother-in-law, George McMillan, whom Dan had
made “General Manager of the Ornaby Four.” George had not quite
fulfilled his own prediction that at forty he was to be a “drunken
broker”; but he had come, as he said, “near enough to it”; and he was
glad when Dan finally sent for him and his designer of a new gasoline
engine, the prospective “Ornaby Four.”
“It’s the greatest idea in the world,” George told his sister. “It’s
cheap, but not the cheapest; it doesn’t compete with the commonest
little cars, nor, on the other hand, with even the moderately expensive
ones. It’s got a place of its own in between, where there are millions
of people that can afford a little better car than the cheapest, but
wouldn’t dream of a luxurious one like the ‘Morgan.’ It was an
inspiration of Dan’s to set the price of the ‘Ornaby’ at eight hundred
and eighty-five dollars. I like the sense of adventure you get in a game
like this. I like getting out of my New York, and I like the way things
move in a place so friendly as this. It’s immensely alive, but somehow
it does manage to be friendly, too. I don’t understand why you’ve always
hated it so.”
She explained that she had hated it less when she was in Europe, where
she had at last got her year, having taken young Henry with her in spite
of her husband’s strong protest. The mother and son had just returned.
“I think I could stand the place perfectly well, George,” she said, “if
I were quite sure I’d never have to see it again!”
“But don’t you begin to understand _yet_ what a husband you’ve got?”
George cried. “Why, he’s a great man, Lena!”
Lena laughed and looked at him pityingly; but contented herself with
that for argument. To her mind Dan was not made great by becoming the
great figure of a city that was merely growing larger, noisier, and
dirtier. She had never cared for anything but Beauty, she said; and, to
her mind, as to that of the fastidious Harlan, Dan was only helping to
increase hideousness; so she joined her brother-in-law in habitually
referring to “Ornaby the Beautiful” as “Ornaby the Horrible.” Moreover,
although she had never manifested any interest in National Avenue before
its destruction began, she became almost vehement upon the subject of
its merit as the razing of its old houses continued; and Harlan was
again in agreement with her here.
“You and Eugene Morgan and that rascally old Sheridan and your Jew
friends are doing an awful thing,” he said to Dan at a family dinner.
“You’re ruining the one decent thing the city possessed—a splendid,
dignified old street. It’s happening all over the country—one doesn’t
need half an hour in New York to see that Fifth Avenue is ruined; but I
did think we might have escaped here. I doubt if it would ever have
occurred to Morgan to put up his awful sales building—with a repair
shop in it!—on National Avenue, if you hadn’t done it first. Then the
others thought they had to follow; and if something isn’t done to stop
you fellows, the whole avenue will be nothing but a mile row of
motor-car sales buildings and pneumatic tire warehouses and garages—a
market!—and with hundred-foot smoke-stacks! It may reach even here to
our old house and the Shelbys’; and already you’ve made the peaceful
neighbourhood around _my_ house horrible. I’d like to know what grandma
Savage would have said about the things you people have done to this
town! Why, you’ve made National Avenue begin to look like an old
pipe-smoking hag’s mouth with every other tooth missing and the rest
sticking up all black in the smoke.”
Dan laughed absent-mindedly, but remained impervious. Like the ardent
Sheridan, he loved the smoke, called it “Prosperity,” and drew his lungs
full of it, breathing in it the glory of his city. More and more, the
city became his city, and with all his juggling and tight-rope dancing
he found time to be mayor of it for a year, and to begin the “Park
System” that was afterwards to bring so much beauty to it. One day he
drove his father over the ground he had planned to include in this chain
of groves and meadows; and he was glad afterwards that they had made the
excursion together.
“It’ll be a great thing for the city,” his father said, as Dan’s car
turned homeward with them. “It’s a great thing for you to do and to be
remembered by. You were a good boy, Dan; and you’re a good man and a
good citizen. You serve your fellow-men well, I think.”
Dan laughed, a little embarrassed by this praise; but although Mr.
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. But I _would_ like to tell you—I’d like to
say——”
He paused, and Dan asked: “You’d like to say what, sir?”
“Well—I’d like just to tell you that your mother and I think you’ve
always been as kind as you could to Lena.”
Surprised, Dan stared at him; and Mr. Oliphant gravely and
affectionately returned his look. “Yes, sir,” the son said awkwardly. “I
hope so. Thank you, sir.” And he thought that the handsome, kind old
face seemed whiter and more fragile than usual.
That was natural, Dan told himself; people couldn’t help growing old,
and they grew whiter and thinner as age came upon them; but age didn’t
necessarily mean ill-health. For that matter, his father hadn’t nearly
reached a really venerable old age; he was more than a decade younger
than old-hickory Shelby, who still never missed a day’s work.
Nevertheless, there had been something a little disquieting in Mr.
Oliphant’s manner; it was as if he had thought that perhaps he might
never have another chance to say what he had said;—and that night, on
the train to which he had hurried after their drive, Dan thought about
his father often.
He thought about him often, too, the next day, in New York; and during
the conferences there with the landscape architects who were designing
the new parks, his thoughts went uneasily westward;—not to the green
stretches of grove and sward that were to be, but to the quiet old man
who had walked so slowly between the tall white gateposts after bidding
his son good-bye. Recalling this, it seemed to Dan that he had never
before seen him walk so slowly; and he went over in his mind, for the
fiftieth time, his father’s manner in speaking of Lena—the slight,
timid insistence, as if there might never be another opportunity to say
something he had always wished to say. It had given what he said the air
of a blessing bestowed—and of a valedictory.
Thus Dan’s vague uneasiness grew, and although he scolded himself for
it, and told himself he was imaginative beyond reason, he could not be
rid of it. That was well for him; since such uneasiness may be of help
when life is like a path whereon tigers leap from nowhere, as it is,
sometimes;—the wayfarer will not avoid wounds, but may better survive
them for having been in some expectance of them.
For a year Mr. Oliphant’s heart had been “not just what it ought to be”;
but he told no one that this was his physician’s report to him. Harlan’s
telegram reached New York just as Dan was starting home. Mr. Oliphant
had indeed taken his last opportunity to say what he had so long wished
to say, for now the kind heart beat no longer;—but he had died proud of
his son.