National Avenue by Booth Tarkington (book recommendations website .txt) 📕

bottling within herself the considerable effervescence she now released upon him. She interrupted him with great spirit. “You wait till I’m through, and then you can have your say! I know these New York girls better than you do. You aren’t capable of knowing anything about women anyway, at your age. You’re the kind of young man that idealizes anything that’ll give you half a chance to idealize it. You are! I’ve watched you. What do girls mean to a young man like you? If he doesn’t think they’re good-looking, they don’t mean anything at all to him; it’s just the same as if they weren’t living. But if he thinks some silly little thing is pretty, and she takes special notice of him, that’s enough;⁠—he’s liable to start right in and act like a crazy man over her! She may be the biggest fool, and the meanest one, too, on earth; he thinks she’s got all the goodness and all the wisdom in the universe! You can’t help getting into that state about her; but after you’ve been married awhile the gloss’ll wear off and you’ll begin to notice what you’ve tied yourself up to⁠—to live with till you’re dead!”

“But I haven’t told you⁠—”

Again she disregarded him. “I know these New York highty-tighties!” she said. “Your grandfather and I went to Saratoga the year after the war, and we spent a month there. We saw a plenty of ’em! They aren’t fit to do anything but flirt and talk French and go to soirées. They’re the most ignorant people I ever met in my life. They’re so ignorant if you asked their opinion of Lalla Rookh they wouldn’t know what you were talking about; but they think you’re funny if you don’t know that some fancy milliner of theirs keeps store on Broadway and not on the Bowery. That’s about the measure of ’em.”

“Well, not nowadays, exactly,” her grandson said indulgently. “Some of the ones you saw at Saratoga thirty or forty years ago may have been like that, grandma, but nowadays⁠—”

“Nowadays,” she said, taking the word up sharply, “they’re just the same. They fooled the young men then just the same as they fool ’em now. They make a young man like you think they know everything, because they’re pretty and talk that affected way Harlan does.”

“But with them it isn’t affected, grandma. It’s natural with them. They’ve always⁠—”

But the obdurate old lady contradicted him instantly. “It’s not! It isn’t natural for any human being to talk like that! You mustn’t bring one of those girls out here to live, Dan.”

“Grandma”⁠—he began in an uneasy voice; “Grandma, I came here to tell you⁠—”

“Yes, I was afraid of it,” she said. “I was afraid of it.”

“Afraid of what?”

A plaintive frown appeared upon her forehead before she answered. She sighed deeply, as if the increased rapidity of her breathing had made her insecure of continuing to breathe at all; and her frail hands, folded in her lap, moved nervously. “Don’t do it, Dan,” she said. “You ought to wait a few years before you marry, anyway. You’re so young, and one of those New York girls wouldn’t understand things here; she wouldn’t know enough not to feel superior. You’d just make misery for yourself.”

But at this he laughed confidently. “You don’t know the one I’m thinkin’ of,” he said. “You’ve guessed something of what I came to tell you, grandma, but you’ve certainly missed fire about her! I’ll show you.” And from his breast pocket he took an exquisite flat case of blue leather and silver; opened it, and handed it to her. “There’s her photograph. I’d like to see if you think she’s the kind you’ve been talkin’ about!”

Mrs. Savage put on the eyeglasses she wore fastened to a thin chain round her neck, and examined the photograph of Lena McMillan. She looked at it steadily for a long minute, then handed it back to her grandson, removed her glasses, and, without a word, again folding her hands in her lap, looked out of the window.

Under these discomfiting circumstances Dan said, as hopefully as he could, “You’ve changed your mind now, haven’t you, grandma?”

“On account of that picture?” she asked, without altering her attitude.

“Yes. Don’t you think she’s⁠—don’t you think she’s⁠—”

“Don’t I think she’s what?” Mrs. Savage inquired in a dead voice.

“Don’t you think she’s perfect?”

“Perfect?” Expressionlessly, she turned and looked at him. “What are your plans, Dan?”

“You mean, when do we expect to⁠—”

“No. What business are you going into?”

“Well⁠—” He paused doubtfully; “I still hope⁠—I mean, if I don’t have to go to New York to live⁠—”

“So?” she interrupted with seeming placidity. “She declines to come here to live, does she? She hates it here, does she, already?”

“I don’t think she would,” he said quickly. “Not if she once got used to it. You see she doesn’t know anything about it; she’s never been west of Rochester, and she only thinks she wouldn’t like it. I’ve been doin’ my best to persuade her.”

“But you couldn’t?”

“Oh, I haven’t given up,” he said. “I think when the time comes⁠—”

“But if she won’t, ‘when the time comes,’ ” Mrs. Savage suggested;⁠—“then instead of living here, where you’ve grown up and want to live, you’ll go and spend your life in New York. Is that it?”

“Well, I⁠—”

“So you’d do it,” she said, “just to please the face in that photograph!”

“You don’t understand, grandma,” he returned, and he hurriedly passed a handkerchief across his distressed forehead. “You see, it isn’t only Lena herself don’t think much of our part of the country. You see, her family⁠—”

“Ah!” the grim lady interrupted. “She’s got a family, has she? Indeed?”

“Great goodness!” he groaned, “I mean her father and mother and her sister and her aunts and her married sister, and everybody. They’re important people, you see.”

“Are they? What do they do that’s important?”

“It isn’t so much what they do exactly,” he explained, “it’s what they are. You see, they’re descended from General McMillan and⁠—”

“General McMillan? Never heard of him. What