NEITHER Mr. Oliphant’s daughter-in-law nor his grandson was at home at
the time of his death. Lena had gone abroad again, for a “three-months’
furlough,” as she called it; and again in spite of Dan’s vehement
protest that the boy “ought to see his own country first,” she had taken
Henry with her.
“I wouldn’t mind it so much,” Dan said to her before they went;—“but
you never even stop off and show him Niagara Falls when you take him to
New York to visit your family; and when I want to take him with _me_,
you always say he’s got a cold or something and has to stay at home. It
seems to me pretty near a disgrace for parents to carry their children
all over Europe and pay no attention to the greatest natural wonders in
the world, right here at home. My father and mother went to Europe with
Harlan and me, but not before they’d taken us to see Mammoth Cave and
Niagara Falls. Why, it’d take _five_ Europes to give me the thrill I got
the first time I ever looked at the Falls! It’s not fair to Henry, and
besides, look what it does to his school work! He picked up some French,
yes, the other time you had him over there; but he dropped a whole year
in his classes. And how much French is he goin’ to need when I take him
into business with me? Not a thimbleful in a lifetime! He’s the best boy
I ever knew and got the finest nature; and he ought to be given the
opportunity to learn something about his own country instead of too much
Paris!”
This patriotic vehemence went for nothing, since Henry intended to
accompany his mother and announced his intentions with a firmness that
left his father nothing to do but grumble helplessly, while Lena
laughed. At fifteen, Henry had his precocities, and among them a desire
(not mentioned) to revisit the Bal Tabarin, as he retained a pleasant
memory of a quiet excursion to this entertainment, during his previous
travels, when he was twelve and already influential with Parisian hotel
guides. Lena had her way, and, having placed the ocean between herself
and further argument on the part of her husband, remained twice as long
as the “furlough” she had proposed. She did not return until Dan’s term
as mayor was concluded, four months after Mr. Oliphant’s death.
When she finally did arrive, her appearance was mollifying;—she had
always looked far less than her age, and now, fresh from amazing
cosmetic artists, and brilliantly studied by superb milliners, she was
prettier than she had ever been. Strangers would have believed a firm
declaration that she was twenty-four; she knew this, and her homecoming
mood was lively—but when Dan within the hour of her arrival wished to
drive her out to Ornaby to see the new house, which he had at last begun
to build, after years of planting and landscaping, she declined. Her
look of gayety vanished into the faraway expression that had always come
upon her face when the new house was mentioned.
“Not to-day,” she said. “I’m not so sure we ought to go ahead with it at
all. I don’t think we ought to leave your mother; she’d be too lonely in
the old house now—living here all alone.”
“But I never dreamed of such a thing,” Dan protested. “She’ll come with
us, of course. This old place is going to be sold before long; I’ve just
about talked her into it, and she can get real money for it now. Land
along here is worth something mighty pretty these days. Why, Fred
Oliphant’s family got seven hundred a front foot for their place three
months ago, and an absolutely magnificent office-building for doctors is
goin’ to be put up there. They’ve got the foundations all in and the
first story’s almost up already. That’s only two blocks below here; and
I can get mother almost any price she wants. I’d buy it myself and sell
it again, only I wouldn’t like to feel I’d taken advantage of her. Why
don’t you come on out now with Henry and me and take a look at our own
doin’s? It’ll surprise you!”
“Oh, some day,” she said, the absent look not disappearing from her
eyes. “I’d rather lie down now, I believe. You run along with Henry.”
Henry showed no great enthusiasm about accompanying his father, and when
they arrived at the new house seemed indifferent to the busy work going
on there. Dan was loud and jocose with him, slapping him on the back at
intervals, and inquiring in a shout how it felt to “be back in God’s
country again.” Upon each of these manifestations, Henry smiled with a
politeness somewhat constrained, replying indistinctly; and, as they
went over the building, now in a skeleton stage of structure, Dan would
stop frequently and address a workman with hearty familiarity: “Look
what I got with me, Shorty! Just got him back all the way from Europe!
How’d _you_ like to have a boy as near a man as this? Pretty fine! Yes,
sir; pretty fine, Shorty!” And he would throw his ponderous arm about
his son’s thin shoulders, and Henry would bear the embrace with a bored
patience, but move away as soon as he could find an excuse to do so.
He was a dark, slender, rather sallow boy, short for the sixteen years
he verged upon, though his face, with its small and shapely features,
like his mother’s, looked older and profoundly reticent. It was one of
those oldish young faces that seem too experienced not to understand the
wisdom of withholding everything; and Henry appeared to be most of all
withholding when he was with his boisterous, adoring father. Obviously
this was not because the boy had any awe of Dan. On the contrary, as one
of the friendly and admiring carpenters observed, “The Big Fellow, he’s
so glad to have that son of his back he just can’t keep his hands off
him; wants to jest hug him all the time, and it makes the kid tired.
Well, I can remember when I was like that—thought I knew it all, and my
old man didn’t know nothin’! I expect this kid does know a few things
the Big Fellow doesn’t know he knows, mebbe! Looks like that kind of a
kid to me.”
The estimate was not ill-founded, as Henry presently demonstrated.
Escaping from his father’s fond and heavy arm, he seated himself upon a
slab of carved stone, produced a beautiful flat gold case, the size and
shape of a letter envelope, and drew from it a tiny cigarette of a type
made in France for women.
Dan stared at him, frowned, and inquired uncomfortably, but with some
severity: “Don’t you think you’re too young for that, Henry?”
“Young?” Henry seemed to be mildly surprised as he lighted the
cigarette. “No, I shouldn’t think so. I’ve smoked for quite some time
now, you know.”
“No; I certainly didn’t know.”
“Oh, yes,” Henry returned placidly. “It’s years since I first began it.”
“Well, but see here——” Dan began; then paused, reddening. “I don’t
believe it’ll be very good for your health,” he concluded feebly.
“My health’s all right,” the youth said, with an air that began to be
slightly annoyed. “Mother’s known I smoked a long while.”
“Well, but——” Dan stopped again, his embarrassment increasing and his
perplexity increasing with it as he remembered that he himself had
smoked at fifteen, surreptitiously. “Well——” he began again, after a
pause, during which Henry blew a beautifully formed little smoke ring.
“Well——”
“Yes, sir?”
“Well——” Dan said. “Well, I’m glad if you do smoke, you do it openly,
anyhow.”
“Yes, sir?” Henry returned, with a slight accent of surprise that
suggested his inability to perceive any reason for not smoking openly.
Then, regarding the incident as closed, he asked: “I suppose you’ll put
up a garage in proportion to the house, won’t you? It’s about time I had
a car of my own, don’t you think, sir?”
“I expect so,” Dan said, still uncomfortable. “I expect we’ll have to
see about it before long. Anyhow, I would rather you did it openly,
Henry. I—I don’t—I——” He stopped, in difficulties with a depth of
feeling that affected his voice. “I—I don’t ever expect to be half as
good a father to you, Henry, as my—as my own father was to me, but
I—well, your uncle Harlan and I were afraid to smoke before him until
we were almost grown up. We used to sneak out to the stable to smoke—or
in alleys—and though my father was so much better a man than I am, and
so much better a father to me than I can ever hope to be to you, I
guess—I guess this is better, Henry. I mean I guess it’s better to have
you open with me, like this. It’s an advance, I expect. I don’t know why
we were afraid to smoke before father; he never whipped us and he was
the kindest man—the best—the best father that ever——” He was unable
to continue; and Henry glanced up to see him, red-faced and swallowing,
struggling with an emotion that made the boy wonder what in the world
was the matter with him.
“I suppose he was, probably,” Henry said. “How about that car? Don’t you
think I might as well have it pretty soon? How about this week’s being
as good as any other time?”
Dan recovered himself, smiled, and patted his son’s shoulder. “I expect
so, maybe. We’ll drive down to our agents on the avenue before we go
home.”
And at this Henry proved that he could still show some animation. He
sprang up, shouting. “Ya-ay!” he cried. “_Vive le sport!_” And he leaped
into the big Morgan limousine that stood waiting for them in the
cluttered driveway. “Come on!” he shouted. “I’ll show you how to shoot a
little life into this old town!”
Rising from her nap, an hour later, Lena looked from her window and saw
them returning. Henry was still animated, talking busily, and, as they
came into the house, seemed willing to bear the weight of his father’s
arm across his shoulders. The mother, looking down upon the pair, smiled
thoughtfully to herself;—she was not more indulgent with the boy than
his father was; but she knew that Henry was more hers than he was his
father’s. He had always been so, because of some chord of subtle
understanding struck by her nature and Henry’s. She had sometimes been
in a temper with him when he was a noisy little boy, but as he grew
older she had begun to feel only amusement over his naughtinesses,
because she understood them so well;—she laughed at him sometimes, but
had long since ceased to chide him. She had no blame for him, and she
knew that he would never find fault with her, no matter what she did.
They had a mysterious comprehension of each other—a comprehension so
complete that they had never needed to speak of it.
She heard him chattering to his grandmother in the hall downstairs, and
knew by his tone that his father had bought him something, of which the
boy would presently tell her;—she remained standing beside the closed
window, waiting for him to come in with his news. Then, as she stood
there, a gust drove down a multitude of soot flakes from the smokestack
of an apartment house that had been built near by, on the cross street
just south of the Oliphants’, while she was away. After the soot, which
flecked the window, the smoke itself descended, enveloping the house so
thickly that the window became opaque. Sounds were not shut out,
however, and she could still hear all too well the chattering of a steam
drill at work across the street, where a public garage was being built.
She frowned at the noise, for the drill had disturbed her sleep; and so
had the almost unceasing rumble of trucks passing the house; and so had
the constant yelp of automobile signals rasping at one another for right
of way.
The smoke thinned out, revealing the busy street that had been so
different when she had first looked forth upon it from this same window,
a bride. She remembered how quiet it had been then—and suddenly she
spoke aloud.
“Well, I’m still here!”
Then she laughed softly, as her eyes wandered to the north, crossed the
iron picket fence that divided the Oliphants’ yard from the Shelbys’,
and beheld the fountain swan. He was green no longer; his colour was
that of the smoke; and though he still shot a crystal spray, the flying
water was the only clean thing about him, or in sight.
“Ridiculous old beast!” Lena said; but there was no bitterness in her
tone. It was a long time since she had felt jealous of Martha; and,
although she often told Harlan that Martha would never marry him,
“because she still hopes Dan’ll be a widower some day,” the warning had
come to be merely jocular, without intended sting. Moreover, she
practised the same raillery with her brother after he had taken up his
residence in the town; for George offered himself as a rival to Harlan
in the half-serious manner of a portly bachelor of forty mildly courting
a contemporary.
Lena repeated her opinion of the swan. “Ridiculous old beast!” This time
she did not murmur the words as before; but spoke them in her mind, and
she immediately followed them with others, the connection being made
without any more feeling than she had about the swan. Her thought was
merely speculative, even a little compassionate: “I suppose she does
still hope it, poor old thing! She thinks maybe, if I leave him——”
But Henry came in with the news of his father’s munificence, and
interrupted this thought that had been in her mind ever since the night
of Martha’s return from the long absence in Italy. Throughout all the
long time since then, there had always been in Lena’s mind a conviction,
however obscured or half-forgotten, that some day she would leave her
husband.