SHE was mistaken about Martha, who never had the definite hope Lena’s
imagination attributed to her. Martha was steadfast because she could
not help it, having been born with this endowment evidently; and her
tenderness for the boy she had loved so heartily was imperishable; but
the Dan Oliphant of the middle years did not seem to her to be that boy.
What she felt for the big middle-aged man, she felt only because he had
long ago been the beloved youth; she was not in love with him, nor with
anybody. This was the explanation she still found it necessary to make
to his brother about once a year—usually on New Year’s Day; for it was
Harlan’s habit to select that hopeful anniversary as a good time to
dwell a little upon his patience.
“You call it your patience, but it became only your habit long ago,” she
told him. “It would really unsettle you badly if I ever said I’d marry
you, Harlan; and it would unsettle you even more if I not only said I
would, but went ahead and did it. You’d find you’d never forgive me for
upsetting your routine. If we were married, where in the world would you
ever _go_? You haven’t been anywhere for so long, except to see me, that
you’d be left without the destination you’ve been accustomed to. It’s
gallant of you to still mention your willingness, every now and then,
and I own up that I rather expect it and should miss it if you didn’t;
but if you want to marry, you ought to look about for—well, say a
pretty widow of twenty-nine, Harlan. She’d be better for you than one of
the ‘buds,’ though you could have whichever you chose;—they’d jump at
the chance! The trouble with me is that I’m too old—and I’m horribly
afraid I look my age.”
The fear was warranted, though it need not have been a fear. She had
escaped the portliness that seemed to threaten her at thirty, and had
escaped too far, perhaps; but her thinness was not angular; and if she
looked her age, then that age was no more than a pleasantly responsible
age, as Harlan told her, and neither a careworn nor a gray-haired age.
In fact, it must be the perfect age, he said—and he wondered if it
mightn’t be as kind as it looked, and be the perfect age for him.
At that, she became more serious. “I’m surprised at myself every year I
grow older,” she said. “I’m so much more romantic than I was at twenty,
and it seems I keep growing more so. At twenty how I’d have laughed if
I’d heard of a woman of forty who said she couldn’t marry because she
was in love with no one! I suppose what would have struck me as funniest
would have been the idea of a woman of forty talking about marrying at
all.”
She was “in love with no one,” but she could still be Harlan’s brother’s
champion, if need arose; and after George McMillan took up his residence
in the town, and began his mild rivalry, she had this amiable bachelor
to second her. Moreover, it is to be admitted for her that she, who in
the bloom of youth had never known how to display the faintest symptoms
of coquetry, now sometimes enjoyed tokens of disturbance unwillingly
exhibited by Harlan when the rival appeared to win an advantage.
McMillan, dark and growing a little bald, counterbalanced what was
lacking above by a decoration below already rare in the land, but not
yet a curiosity, a Van Dyke beard, well suited to his face. In manner,
too, he was equal to the flavour of a fine old portrait, and he had
spoken from his childhood in the accent Harlan had carefully acquired.
Thus the latter was sometimes but too well encountered on his own
ground.
He met one of these defeats in an early April twilight when he had
expected to find Martha alone, as he knew a meeting of the board of
directors of the “Ornaby Four” had been called for that evening, and
George McMillan was a member of the board. The air was warm with one of
the misplacements of this season, when sometimes a midsummer day wanders
from its proper moorings and irrationally ascends almost to the chilly
headwaters of spring. Martha was upon the veranda, occupied with a fan
and the conversation of Mr. McMillan when Harlan arrived; and the
newcomer was so maladroit as to make his disappointed expectations
plain.
“I thought you had a directors’ meeting,” he said, almost with his
greeting and before he had seated himself in one of the wicker chairs
brought out upon the veranda by the unseasonable warmth. “I thought
there was——”
George assented placidly. “There was, but it couldn’t be held. Our
president had to go to another one that he’s president of—the Broadwood
Interurban. It’s in difficulties, I’m afraid, because of too high wages
and too much competition by motorcycles and small cars. I hope Dan can
straighten it out.”
“I hope so,” Harlan said. “That is, strictly as his brother I hope so.
As a human being still trying to exist in what was once a comfortable
house, I might take another attitude. I live deep in the downtown
district now, for my worst sins, and those long Broadwood cars screech
every hour, night and day, on a curve not a hundred yards from my
library.” He sighed. “But why should I waste my breath, still
complaining? It all grows steadily worse and worse, year after year, and
if one happens to like living in a city in his own native land, there’s
nowhere to escape to. I suppose National Avenue—poor thing, look at the
wreck of it!—I say I suppose it couldn’t have hoped to escape the fate
of Fifth Avenue; for the same miserable ruction is going on all over the
country. My illustrious brother and his kind have ruined everything that
was peaceful and everything that was clean—they began by murdering the
English language, and now they’ve murdered all whiteness. Beauty is
dead.”
“Isn’t that only a question of your definition?” McMillan inquired.
“Why is it?”
“For one reason, because everything’s a question of definitions.”
“No, it isn’t,” Harlan returned somewhat brusquely; and Martha sat in
silence, amused to perceive that her two callers had straightway resumed
a tilting not infrequent when they met. A lady’s part was only to
preside at the joust. “There’s only one definition of beauty,” Harlan
added to his contradiction.
“What is it?”
“The one Athens believed in.”
“It won’t do for that brother of yours,” his antagonist returned. “The
Greeks are dead, and you can’t tie Dan and his sort down to a dead
definition. The growth isn’t beautiful to you, but it is to them, or
else they wouldn’t make it. Of course you’re sure you’re right about
your own definition, but they’re so busy making what _they_’re sure is
beautiful they don’t even know that anybody disagrees with them. It
won’t do you the slightest good to disagree with them, either.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’ve got everything in their hands,” George McMillan replied
cheerfully;—“and they’re too busy to listen to any one who isn’t making
something besides criticisms.”
“And for that reason,” Harlan began, “all of us who care for what’s
quiet and cool and charming in life are to hold our peace and let——”
He was interrupted, unable to make himself heard because of a shattering
uproar that came from beyond the iron fence to the south. A long and
narrow motor car, enamelled Chinese red, stood in the Oliphants’
driveway, and an undersized boy of sixteen had just run out of the house
and jumped into the driver’s seat. Dusk had not fallen darkly; he saw
the group upon the neighbouring veranda well enough, but either thought
it too much effort to salute Martha and his uncles, or was preoccupied
with the starting of his car;—he gave no sign of being aware of them.
Evidently the unmuffled machine-gun firing of his exhaust was delightful
to his young ears, for he increased its violence to the utmost, although
the noise was unlawful, and continued it as he shot the car down the
drive, out of the gates and down the street at a speed also unlawful.
“There, at least,” Harlan said, “is something of which criticism might
possibly be listened to with good effect—even by my busy brother.”
But George laughed and shook his head. “No. That’s the very last thing
he’d allow you to criticize. He’d only tell you that Henry is ‘the
finest young man God ever made!’ In fact, that’s what he told me
yesterday evening when I dined there; and I had more than a suspicion
I’d caught a whiff of something suggesting a cocktail from our mutual
nephew, as he came in for a hurried dinner between speedings. But that
isn’t Dan’s fault.”
“Yes, it is,” Harlan said. “Giving a sixteen-year-old boy a car like
that!”
“No, the fault is my sister’s. What’s a boy to do when his mother keeps
him hanging around Paris so long in the autumn that it’s too late for
him to make up his class-work, and he has only a tutor to cajole? I
don’t blame Henry much. In fact, the older I grow the less I blame
anything.”
“No?” Harlan said. “I’m afraid the world won’t get anywhere very fast
unless there are some people to point out its mistakes.”
But the other bachelor jouster was not at all disconcerted by this
reproof, nor by the tone of it, which was incautiously superior. “By
George, Oliphant, I always _have_ believed you were really a true
Westerner under that surface of yours! The way you said ‘the world won’t
get anywhere very fast’ was precisely in the right tone. You’re
reverting to type, and if the reversion doesn’t stop I shan’t be
surprised to hear of your breathing deep of the smoke and calling it
‘Prosperity’ with the best of them!”
Harlan was displeased. “I suppose the smoke comes under your definition
of beauty, too, doesn’t it?”
“It isn’t my definition,” George explained. “I was groping for Dan’s.
Yes, I think the smoke’s beautiful to him because he believes it means
growth and power, and he thinks they’re beautiful.”
“I dare say. Would you consider it a rational view for any even
half-educated man to hold—that soft-coal smoke is beautiful? Do you
think so, Martha, when it makes pneumonia epidemic, ruins everything
white that you have in your house and everything white that you wear? Do
you?”
“It’s pretty trying,” she answered, as a conscientious housewife, but
added hopefully: “We’ll get rid of it some day, though. So many people
are complaining of it I’m sure they’ll do something about it before
long.”
Harlan laughed dryly, for he had hoped she would say that. “I’ve been
re-reading John Evelyn’s diary,” he said. “Evelyn declared the London
smoke was getting so dreadful that a stop would have to be put to it
somehow. The king told him to devise a plan for getting rid of it, and
Evelyn set about it quite hopefully. That was in the latter part of the
seventeenth century. Evelyn is dead, but the smoke’s still there.”
“And yet,” George McMillan said coolly, “I’m told they’ve made quite a
place of London, in spite of that!”
Martha laughed aloud, and Harlan was so unfortunate as to be annoyed.
“It seems rather a childish argument in view of the fact that we sit
here in the atmosphere of what might well be a freight yard,” he said;
and, turning to Martha he spoke in a lowered voice, audible to his
opponent, yet carrying the implication that McMillan was excluded from
the conference. “My committee have at last got the symphony organization
completed,” he said. “The orchestra knows it can depend on a reliable
support now, and the first concert will be two weeks from to-night. I
hope you won’t mind going with me.”
“No; I won’t mind,” she said, and hospitably explained to McMillan:
“We’ve been trying for years to expand our week of the ‘April Festival’
into something more permanent. Mr. Oliphant has done most of the work,
and it’s really a public service. It will be good news for your
sister;—I understand she’s always felt we were a lost people, in music
particularly.”
“We’ll have a start at any rate,” Harlan said, as he rose to go. “That
is, if the smoke doesn’t throttle our singers. Venable is back from
South America and there ought to be some interest to hear him.”
“Venable?” George repeated. “Did you say Venable?”
“Yes; the baritone. He’s still just in his prime; at least so his agent
says. Have you ever heard him?”
“Long ago,” the other returned. “I——” He stopped abruptly.
“Did you know him?” Martha asked.
“No. That is, I had a short interview with him once, but—no, I
shouldn’t say I know him.” He rose, in courtesy to the departing Harlan,
and extended his hand. “You mustn’t wait behind the next corner and leap
out on me with a bowie-knife, Oliphant,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be
such a disagreeable arguer.”
“Not at all,” Harlan returned, somewhat coldly, though he added an
effect of geniality to his departure by a murmur of laughter, and got
away without any further emphasis upon his disappointment at finding his
rival in possession. The latter gentleman, however, made little use of
the field left open to him. Not long after Harlan had gone Martha
noticed that her remaining guest seemed to be rather absent-minded, and
she rallied him upon it.
“I’m afraid you thrive upon conflict, Mr. McMillan.”
“Why?”
“Peace doesn’t seem to stimulate you—or else _I_ don’t! You’ve hardly
spoken since Mr. Oliphant left. I’m afraid you’re——”
“You’re afraid I’m what?” he said, as she paused; and although the dusk
had fallen now, it was not too dark for her to see that his
preoccupation was serious.
“Are you troubled about anything?” she asked.
“No. Why?”
“I thought you looked——”
“Oh, no,” he said. “It’s nothing. Perhaps I am a little bothered,” he
admitted. “But it’s only about business.”
“Not about the ‘Ornaby Four?’” she said, surprised. “I thought it was
established as a tremendous success.”
“Oh, it is,” he assured her promptly. “It is. It’s an extraordinary
little car and nothing can stop it—except temporarily. It’s bound to
climb over any little temporary difficulties. We may have made mistakes,
but they won’t amount to anything in the long run.”
“You say you _have_ made mistakes?”
“Not until this year, and even then nothing we can’t remedy. You see
Dan’s a great fellow for believing in almost anything that’s new, and an
inventor came along last summer with a new type of friction clutch; and
we put it in our car. Then I’m afraid we built a fairly enormous number
of ‘Fours’ during the winter, but you see we were justified in that,
because we knew there’d be a demand for them.”
“And there wasn’t?”
“Oh, yes; there was. But——” he paused; then went on: “Well, the people
haven’t seemed to like the new clutch, and that gives us rather a black
eye for the time being. Of course we’re going to do our best to
straighten things out; we’ll put our old clutch back on all the new
cars, but——”
He paused uncomfortably again, and she inquired: “But won’t that make
everything all right again?”
“Oh, yes—after a time. The trouble is, I’m afraid it’s stopped our
sales rather flat—for the time being, that is. You see, there’s a lot
of money we expected would be pouring in on us about now—and it doesn’t
pour. I’m not really worried, but I’m a little afraid Dan might need it,
because his inter-urban ventures appear to have been—well, rather
hazardous. You told me once that his brother’s description of him was
‘dancing on the tight-rope’ and in a way that’s not so far wrong. Of
course he’ll pull through.” George suddenly struck the stone railing
beside him a light blow with his open hand, and jumped up. “Good
gracious! What am I doing but talking business to a lady on a spring
evening? I knew I was in my dotage!” And he went to the steps.
“Wait,” Martha said hurriedly. “You don’t really think——”
“That Dan Oliphant’s affairs are in any real danger? No; of course
not;—I don’t know what made me run on like that. Men go through these
little disturbances every day; it’s a part of the game they play, and
they don’t think anything about it. You can be sure _he_ isn’t worrying.
Did you ever know him to let such things stop him? He’s been through a
thousand of ’em and walked over ’em. He’s absolutely all right.”
“You’re sure?” she said, as he went down the steps.
“He’s absolutely all right, and I’d take my oath to it,” George said;
but he added: “That is, he is if the banks don’t call him.”
“If the banks don’t what?”
He laughed reassuringly. “If the banks don’t do something they have no
reason to do and certainly won’t do. Good-night. I’m going to stop in
next door and see my sister a little while before she goes to bed.”
His figure grew dimmer as he went toward the gate, and Martha, staring
after him, began to be haunted by that mysterious phrase of his, “if the
banks don’t call him.”