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

misprized. To Dan it seemed as though Lena herself had been injuriously mishandled, whereas the injury fell really upon something much more delicate; the lovely image he had made for himself and thought was Lena⁠—an angelic substance most different from the substance of that “little brunette” herself.

He told himself that his grandmother had increased in unreasonableness with increasing age, but in spite of all efforts to reassure himself, and notwithstanding her prediction that he would receive a foolish support from his parents in the matter of his engagement, it was decidedly without jauntiness that he made his announcement to them after dinner that evening.

He found them in the library, a shadowy big room where the fire of soft coal twinkled again upon polished dark woodwork, upon the clear glass doors of the bookcases, and touched with rose the eyeglasses and the shining oval façade of Harlan’s shirt as he sat reading Suetonius under a tall lamp in the bay window. Harlan, unlike his father and his brother, always dressed for dinner.

He was the thinner and perhaps an inch the shorter of the two brothers; but in spite of their actual likeness of contour, people who knew them most intimately sometimes maintained that there was not even an outward resemblance, so sharp was the contrast in manner and expression. It was Martha Shelby who said that if Harlan had been a year shipwrecked and naked on a savage isle he would still look fastidious and wear “that same old ‘How-vulgar-everything-seems-to-be!’ expression.” Tramps approaching Harlan on the street to beg a dime from him usually decided at the last moment to pass on in philosophic silence.

He was no more like the two handsome, gray-haired people who sat by the library fire, that evening, than he was like his brother. Mr. Oliphant, genial and absentminded, was the very man of whom any beggar would make sure at first sight; and he was without an important accumulation of fortune now, in fact, because venturous friends of his had too often made sure of him to go on a note or to forestall a bankruptcy that eventually failed to be forestalled. His wife was not the guardian to save him from a disastrous generosity; she was the most ready woman in the world to be recklessly kind, and when kindness brought losses she kept as sunny a heart as her husband did.

Mrs. Savage was right: from this pair no discipline for the good of their son’s future need have been expected, although her own effect upon him had been so severe that he began his announcement in the library with a defensive formality that denoted apprehension. His formality, moreover, was elaborate enough to be considered intricate, with the result that his surprised listeners were at first not quite certain of his meaning.

His father withdrew slippered feet from close intimacy with the brass fender enclosing the hearth, stared whimsically at his son, and inquired: “What is it all about, Dan?”

“Sir?”

“It doesn’t quite penetrate,” Mr. Oliphant informed him. “You seem to be making an address, but I’m not secure as to its drift. I gather that you believe something about there coming a time in a young man’s life when his happiness depends upon an important step, and you’d hate to be deprived of something or other. You said something, too, about a union. It didn’t seem to connect with labour questions, so I’m puzzled. Could you clarify my mind?”

Harlan, resting his book in his lap, laughed dryly and proffered a suggestion: “It sounds to me, sir, as if he might possibly mean a union with a damsel of marriageable age and propensities.”

“Dan!” the mother cried. “Is that what you mean?”

“Yes’m,” he said meekly. “I wanted to tell you last night, but⁠—well, anyway it’s so. She’s the most splendid, noblest, finest girl I ever met, and I know you’ll think so, too. Here⁠—well, here’s her picture.” And he handed the blue case to Mrs. Oliphant.

“Why, Dan!” she said, suddenly tearful, as she took the case and held it open before her.

Her husband, not speaking, got up quickly, came behind her and looked over her shoulder at the photograph of Lena. Then after a moment he looked at Dan, but for a time seemed to be uncertain about what he ought to say. “She’s⁠—ah⁠—she’s pretty enough, Dan,” he said finally, in his kind voice. “She’s certainly pretty enough for us to understand your getting this way about her.”

“Yes, Dan,” his mother agreed. “She⁠—she’s quite pretty. I’m sure she’s pretty.”

“She’s beautiful!” Dan declared huskily. “She’s beautiful, and she’s more than that; she has a character that’s perfect. She has an absolutely perfect character, mother.”

“I hope so,” Mrs. Oliphant said gently, bending her head above the blue case. “After all, you can’t tell everything from a photograph.” She looked up at her husband as if arguing with him. “You can’t tell much from a photograph.”

“No,” he assented readily. “Of course you can’t. In fact, you can tell very little; but you can see this is a pretty girl, anyhow. I expect you’d better tell us a little more about her, Dan.”

Dan complied. That is to say, he did his best to make them comprehend Lena’s perfection; and, touching lightly upon her descent from that somewhat shadowy figure in heroic antiquity, General McMillan⁠—Dan felt sensitive for the general since Mrs. Savage’s suggestion about the Knights of Pythias⁠—he kept as much as possible to the subject of Lena herself, and ended by declaring rather oratorically that she had just the qualities he had always admired in the noblest women.

“I do hope so, Dan dear,” his mother said, her eyes still shining with tears in the firelight. “I do hope so!”

“Yes,” Mr. Oliphant agreed, “I hope so, too, Dan; and anyhow, if you’ve cared enough about her to ask her to marry you, that’s the main thing. You can be sure your mother and father will do their best to be fond of anybody you’re fond of.”

“But she has those qualities, father,” Dan said, not quite sure, himself, why he