HE MADE this promise with an angrily confident determination to fulfil
it, but the next few days were to teach him that he had not yet learned
all there was to know about his sister. When he forced his way to an
interview with her in her rooms in the hotel to which she had gone in
New York, she laughed at his fury.
“_Why_ haven’t I been a good wife to him?” she asked. “I’ve spent quite
a number of years in purgatory, trying to stick to what I undertook when
he married me! Oh, yes, I know you like the place, George; and I don’t
challenge your viewpoint. But I have my own, and, whether it’s right or
not, it’s mine and I can’t get rid of it. I suffer by it, and I have to
live by it—and to me the place has always been a purgatory. It’s
interesting to you, but it’s hideous to me. You like the people;—to you
they seem intelligent and friendly. To me they’re intrusive barbarians
with unbearable voices. I stood it at first because I had to; I didn’t
have anywhere else to go, and I did care for Dan. Then I kept on
standing it because I’d got the habit, I suppose, and because it’s hard
to get the courage to break away. Well, thank Heaven, something’s given
me the courage at last. I was always just on the very verge of it, and
the trouble about Henry pushed me over. I’ve perished for years because
I couldn’t get a breath of art; I haven’t lived——”
“You could have!” he cried. “With such a man——”
“Dan? Good heavens! I might go on living with a man, even after I’d
stopped caring for him, if he still cared for me; but it’s years since I
realized absolutely that neither of us cared for the other. I knew then
I’d have to do this some day.”
“And how beautifully you did do it!” her brother exclaimed. “His mother
told me about your screaming and storming at Dan after he brought that
miserable boy home. Do you think I didn’t understand? You _wanted_ a
quarrel to justify your going, so that the real reason wouldn’t be
suspected. You’d seen that singing _beef_ again, and you meant to see
him _again_—oh, I kept near you that night, and I read you, every
instant! You haven’t fooled me about what gave you the ‘courage,’ Lena!
It was indeed ‘the breath of art,’ old girl, and not ‘the trouble about
Henry!’ You made that quarrel with Dan deliberately. It was to cover
what you weren’t thoroughbred enough to face. You weren’t honest enough
to——”
“At least I’m honest enough to tell you that you’re wasting your
breath,” Lena said coolly. “You want to take Henry home with you, but he
doesn’t care to go. He behaved idiotically there—it _isn’t_ a good
place for him—and of course, under the circumstances, he’s embarrassed
about going back. He wants to stay with me just now, and he’ll do what I
tell him. You can’t take him back with you, but if you’ll obtain a
proper allowance for me, or a settlement, from my husband, I’ll arrange
later for Henry to spend a part of his time with his father. That’s
absolutely the best I’ll do, and you’d better run back and make it quite
clear to Dan. I bear him no ill will, and I’ll be perfectly fair with
him on the terms I’ve just mentioned.”
Her brother’s bitterness with her was not abated; but to effect his
purpose he tried more reasonable persuasions, and when these were
unavailing, raged again. All he did was useless; he could neither shake
her nor exert the slightest influence upon Henry, though he continued
the siege for three days over the four that he had promised. Then he
returned, a defeated but fuming negotiator, to report his failure. His
final instructions from his sister were to make it quite clear to Dan
that she bore him no ill will and wished him well.
But when George reached the old house of the Oliphants, driving there
directly from the train, he was told that he could not make her message
clear to her husband; that he could not make anything clear to him.
Harlan took the dismayed traveller into the library. “The doctor says
the trouble is there isn’t anything to build up a resistance,” Harlan
said. “You see Dan’s never taken any care of his health—‘too busy,’ of
course—and he’s exhausted his vitality. He caught a fearful cold going
round in the rain hunting for that precious boy of his, and instead of
staying in bed and nursing himself, he was hustling all over the place
in a drizzle the next morning. He was all run-down to start with, and
his system couldn’t afford it. At least, that’s what they told us after
the consultation yesterday afternoon.”
“Consultation?” McMillan repeated blankly, though Harlan’s manner had
already prepared him for words worse than this.
Harlan sighed audibly, and shook his head. “Both lungs are congested,
they told us early this morning. He can’t——” He went to the bay window
and looked down at the slightly frayed upholstery of the easy-chair it
had once been his wont to occupy there. “Well, at your age and mine
we’ve had experience of sickness enough to know that nobody can stand
_that_ long.”
“Yes,” McMillan groaned. “I suppose so.”
“I think we won’t tell him you’ve got back,” Harlan said. “He’s asked
about it every now and then—wants to know if you’ve brought Henry yet.
It’ll be better to let him keep on expecting him than to tell him you’ve
come back alone. I telegraphed you after the consultation, but by that
time you’d already left New York, of course.”
“Yes; it didn’t reach me.”
Then, for a time, neither of them found more to say. Harlan, near the
window, stared out into the smoke haze that a cloudy day held down upon
the city; McMillan sat frowning at the floor, and the room was vaguely
noisy with a confusion of sounds from outdoors: hammerings and
clatterings of steel where buildings were going up; the rending of
timbers and crashes and shoutings where they were going down; the uproar
of ponderous trucks grinding by upon the brick-paved cross street to the
south, so that the strong old house trembled with the subterranean
communication of their vibrations—all to the incessantly rasped
accompaniment of motor signals on the avenue.
“Isn’t this a hell to be sick in?” Harlan asked, turning abruptly to
McMillan. “We couldn’t raise the windows to give him air without giving
him this infernal smoke that makes him cough harder. And the
noise—there’s hardly a respite from it all night long! When the workmen
go home the joy-riders and the taxis keep it up till daylight. He was
too sick to be taken to a hospital or——” He interrupted himself with a
desperate laugh. “We almost had to! Yesterday morning the servants
called me, and I found the house full of men; they’d brought trucks
right across the lawn, and started to work. They’d come to wreck the
house—to tear it down. I told the foreman my brother was very sick, and
he said in that case we’d better take him to a hospital; he had his
orders from the contractor, and he was going ahead! Some of his men were
already on the roof, making a horrible noise and tearing away the
slate—throwing it down into the yard under Dan’s window. I had hard
work to get rid of them; and they left a great hole in the roof when
they went. My heaven! when such things happen how’s anybody ever to see
any _meaning_ in life?”
“I don’t know!” George groaned. “I don’t see much meaning in
anything—not after what you’ve told me about Dan’s condition.”
“McMillan, I don’t see a bit of meaning to the whole miserable business.
Here’s my brother spent all his days and nights—and all his strength
and health—just blindly building up a bigger confusion and uproar that
smashes him; and then when he _is_ smashed, it keeps on bothering him
and disturbing him—yes, and choking him!—on his very deathbed! I know
your theory that it all means power, and that power may be thought
beautiful—but it can’t last, because nothing can last. So what the
deuce is the good of it?”
And when the other, groaning again, said that he didn’t know, Harlan
groaned, too—then crossed the room to where George sat in a crumpled
attitude, touched him lightly on the shoulder, and turned away. “You’re
a good fellow, McMillan, and you haven’t anything in the world to
reproach yourself with. I don’t think he’s minded Lena’s going away; he
hasn’t spoken of her at all, and I really believe he doesn’t think of
her. Your record with Dan is all right, but I’ve been realizing that
mine isn’t. I could have made success easier for him long ago; though I
don’t reproach myself so much with that, because he _did_ get his
success—for a while, and that’s all anybody gets—and he enjoyed it all
the more for having got it without help. What I’m thinking about this
morning: I seem to have spent a great part of my life saying, ‘What’s
the good of it?’ as I did just now, and it’s my brother’s work I’ve been
saying it about. I’ve always been ‘superior’—and I’ll never be
different. I was born so, I believe, and didn’t see it in time. The most
I’ve ever actually _done_ was to help organize a dilettante musical
club! And Dan—well, I hope it’s as you intimated the other night on
Martha’s porch—I hope Dan’s been too busy to be much bothered about my
‘judgments!’ I’ve been just nothing; but even if he falls, he’s at least
been a branch of the growing tree, though we don’t know where it’s
growing to, or why.”
“No,” McMillan said. “We don’t know anything.”
Harlan had begun to pace up and down the room. “I didn’t understand that
Dan was in real trouble financially,” he said. “He’d been on the edge so
often—I talked about it, but I’d got to thinking of it as a permanent
thing for him to be on the edge. I didn’t realize he might actually fall
_off_—not until that little Jew friend of his came to me the other
morning and _made_ me realize it. Well, there’s one thing I can be
thankful for: I can be grateful that all I thought of, for once in my
life, was that I was Dan’s brother!”
“Harlan?” Martha Shelby’s voice called him softly from the stairway.
“Yes?” He turned to the door, explaining, “Dan may want me—he sends for
me to come in sometimes. Perhaps you might——” He paused.
“Yes,” George said, rising. “I’ll go and wire her. She might want to
come. At any rate she’ll send Henry. Then I’ll come back here. I’ll be
downstairs in this room, if there’s anything——”
“I’ll let you know,” Harlan said, and he went upstairs to Martha.
“Your mother’s been with him,” she whispered. “She and the nurse said he
seemed to be trying to ask for somebody, but he was so weak, and his
cough troubled him so much——”
“I’ll go in and see,” he said; but he came back to her a few moments
later, and told her it was for her that Dan was asking.
She went into his room, sat by his bed, and put her hand gently over his
on the coverlet. “Why, you’re better, Dan,” she said, as he turned his
head and looked at her with eyes that cleared and grew brighter, for he
recognized her.
“Think so?” He spoke distinctly though his voice was weak. “Well,
maybe—maybe. I did hope——”
“Yes, Dan?”
“I did hope I wouldn’t have to be sick very long. I’ve got so much to
do. I’ve done a good deal of work, but I haven’t ever _got_ anywhere
with it, much. There’s a mighty big lot I’ll have to begin over, Martha.
You don’t”—he paused, and laughed faintly. “You don’t—you don’t
suppose God’s used me and now He’s goin’ to throw me away, do you?”
“No, no, no!” she said, making her voice cheerful. “You’ve only got to
go ahead with what you began long ago.”
“No,” he said reflectively. “No; it isn’t exactly like that, Martha. Not
exactly, that is. You see right now I’m a pretty complete failure—yes,
I am. I’m a pretty bad failure.”
“You? You’re not!”
“Yes, I am,” he returned feebly. “I better face it, Martha, or I’ll
never get anywhere. They’ve got Ornaby away from me——” His cough
interrupted him; but he patiently let it have its way; and then, in a
tone in which a wondering incredulity seemed to merge with resignation,
he said, “Yes, sir; they did get Ornaby away from me!”
“But you’ll get it back, Dan?”
“Think so? Well, maybe—maybe,” he said indulgently. “But things do look
like it came pretty close to a failure, Martha. It _would_ have been
one, too—it’d have been a bankruptcy, and I believe I just couldn’t
have stood that—but, well, anyhow it wasn’t that bad, thanks to
Harlan.”
Martha’s eyes widened. “Do you mean—do you mean Harlan helped you?”
“It was mighty good of him,” Dan said. “My friends went to him and asked
him if he wouldn’t let us have some money on a second mortgage on the
new house. Harlan dug out all the securities he could sell for ready
cash and he brought the money to me down at Sam Kohn’s office. I must
make it up to him some day. If it hadn’t been for that I’d have gone
clean under!” He laughed huskily. “Everybody’d have known I was a
failure for sure, if it hadn’t been for that, Martha.”
“But you’re not!” she insisted. “You mustn’t keep talking such nonsense,
Dan.”
“It isn’t—it isn’t exactly nonsense.” The cough stopped him again; but
he went on, while it still troubled him: “I’m a failure, Martha. I’ve
been a failure in business—and a failure as a husband—and a failure as
a father. George McMillan hasn’t got here with Henry yet, has he?”
“No, dear; not yet.”
Dan’s hand moved restlessly under hers, and she released it. With a
visible effort he rubbed his forehead, a gesture of perplexity that hurt
her and made it difficult for her to retain her appearance of
cheerfulness, because this characteristic gesture brought his boyhood so
vividly to her memory. “I’ve just _got_ to have Henry back,” he said.
“I’ve got to get him back so’s to do right by him. It isn’t—it isn’t
fair to a boy, Martha.”
“What isn’t?”
“Do you remember my grandmother Savage?”
“Of course. No one could forget her, Dan.”
“No, I guess not. Well, she”—he shook his head, and half coughed, half
laughed—“she was right about some things. My! but wouldn’t she be
sayin’, ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ if she knew what’s happened to my poor
Henry! I’ve been a terrible failure with Henry, Martha.” He looked
patiently at her as she denied this; and then he said abruptly: “Why,
I’ve even been a failure with _you_, Martha!”
“That’s the absurdest thing you’ve said, dear!”
“No. I’ve been a failure as a friend, too. I let Lena fret me out of
comin’ in to see you when you’d been away that long stretch. I had no
business to pay any attention to her. You see—why, _you_ always really
liked me better than she did, Martha!”
He spoke as if it were a discovery just made; and she assented to it,
taking his hand again. “Yes, Dan. I’ve always liked you better than
anybody.”
“Have you?” he said inquiringly. “Well, I’m right glad to hear it. I’m
right glad to hear it, Martha.”
“Yes, dear. I always have.”
He closed his eyes, but she felt a faint pressure upon her hand from
his, and sat still for a time, looking at him with fond eyes that grew
frightened as the pressure upon her fingers relaxed. She was not sure,
for the moment, that he was still breathing; and she looked a terrified
inquiry at the grave nurse who sat on the other side of the bed. The
nurse shook her head, forming with her lips the word, “Sleeping”; but
Dan opened his eyes again.
“It’s curious,” he said, “the way things are. A fellow goes along, and
everything seems to run all right, year after year—he can hear a little
kind of grindin’ noise, maybe, sometimes, or something seems to slip,
but he patches it up and doesn’t let it scare him—he keeps goin’ right
along and everything seems to be workin’ about as usual—and then one
thing goes wrong—and then another—and then all of a sudden the whole
works pile up on top of him, and he’s down under the heap!” He took his
hand again from Martha’s, and again passed it tremulously over his
forehead in the old familiar gesture. “Well—maybe I could start in
again if I can get over what ails me. I expect I need a good night’s
rest first, though. Maybe I can sleep now.”
Martha went tiptoeing out, and through the hall to the room that had
been Lena’s. Harlan was there, sitting close beside his mother. “He
wants to sleep,” Martha told them, but had no sooner spoken than Dan’s
renewed coughing was heard—a sound that racked the sick man’s mother.
She shivered and gasped, and then, as the convulsion became fainter,
went out trembling into the hall.
“Harlan,” Martha said, “why didn’t you tell me you tried to help Dan—at
last?”
He rose, looking annoyed. “I didn’t do anything that was in the
slightest degree a sacrifice,” he said. “I don’t want you to
misunderstand it. I never helped him when I thought it would be thrown
away, and I didn’t this time. He made over the new house to me, and I
guess Lena’ll sign the deed; she’ll have to. In time it’ll probably be
worth all I gave for it. I wasn’t going to see the name of Oliphant
dragged through all the miserable notoriety of bankruptcy—and there was
something besides.”
“Yes?” she said. “What was that?”
“Well, a pack of old money-vultures were after him, and after all Dan’s
my brother.”
“Yes, he is!” Martha said. She began to cry bitterly, but silently; then
suddenly she put her arms about him. “He’s still your brother, Harlan!
We can say that yet;—he’s just in that room down the hall there—he’s
not gone away—he’s _still_ your brother, Harlan!”
But even as Martha spoke, Mrs. Oliphant, looking through the door of the
sick room, cried out in terror, then rushed to her son’s bedside. Dan
had unexpectedly lifted himself almost half upright; he seemed to
struggle to rise; and in his eyes, wide-opened, but seeing neither his
mother nor the nurse, there was a look of startled incredulity—the look
of one who suddenly recognizes, to his utter astonishment, an old
acquaintance long since disappeared but now abruptly returned.
A moment later the uncontrolled sobbing of his mother let Harlan know
that he no longer had a brother in the room down the hall.