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

till the job’s put through⁠—don’t ever doubt it’s going to be a big thing; but I see how you might look at it. If you do look at it as forcing you, please just try to forgive me and believe I did mean for the best for both of us, Lena, dear.

My mother and father want us to live with them, and I think it would be the best and most sensible thing for us to do. There’s a great deal of room and if we rented a house we couldn’t get a very comfortable or good-looking one, I’m afraid, because all we can possibly spare of what I have left will just have to go into the Addition.

I’m so afraid this letter will worry you. I don’t know what to do or what else to say except please write as soon as you can to tell me how it strikes you, and if you can say so please say you don’t think I meant to force our living here, and you still care something about me.

The trouble is you don’t know what a great place to live this is, because you haven’t ever been anywhere except a few places East and Europe. You would soon get used to the difference between living here and New York and after that you’d never want to live anywhere else. Of course it’s mighty pleasant to go to New York or Europe for a visit now and then, and most of the people you’d meet here do that, just as you and I would hope to when we could afford it, but for a place to settle down and live in, I know you’d get to feeling we’ve got the most satisfactory one on the face of the globe right here. Won’t you write me right away as soon as you read this and tell me you don’t think I’ve tried to force anything, and anyhow no matter what you think you forgive me and haven’t changed toward me, dear?

VIII

But Lena did not respond right away. Instead, she allowed a fortnight to elapse, during which her state of mind was one of indecision and her continuous emotion a sharp irritation; both of these symptoms being manifest in an interview she had with her brother George, one day, when she finally decided to consult him. “It’s so indecently unfair!” she complained. “It is forcing me; and his letter was a perfectly abject confession of it. He admits himself he’s compelling me to go out to that awful place and live with him.”

“How do you know it’s awful?” George inquired mildly. “He’s the most likable chap I ever knew, and he comes from there. Doesn’t that look as if⁠—”

“No, it doesn’t. Just think of being compelled to listen to everybody speaking with that awful Western accent! I can stand it in him because I like his voice, and he’s only one; but imagine hearing nothing else!” Lena shivered, flinging out her beautiful little hands in a despairing gesture, illuminated by tiny stars of fire from her rings. “Just imagine having hundreds of ’em talking about ‘waturr’ and ‘butturr’ all day long!”

“Oh, I dare say they speak of other matters at intervals,” George said. “If that’s the supremest agony you have to face, Lena, I don’t see why you’re kicking up such a row with yourself. I’d rather like to go out there, myself.”

“What in the world for?”

“Well, for one reason,” he answered seriously, “because I like Dan, but principally because I’d do well to get away from New York.”

“To live?” she cried incredulously. “I could understand that, if you meant you’d like to get away in order to live in Paris, but to want to go out and bury yourself in one of those awful Western⁠—”

“Paris!” George exclaimed. “For me? I suppose your idea is a short life but a merry one!”

“Why not? It might be better than living to a hundred on ‘watturr’ and ‘butturr!’ What’s the matter with you and New York?”

“Nothing’s the matter with New York except that it’s got so many sides it can be whatever one chooses to make it, so that a weak character like me gets too many chances to increase his weaknesses here. There’s no question about it, Lena; I’m a weak character. I’ve proved it to myself too many times to doubt it. A smaller city is pretty much one thing, but New York is anything because it’s everything. The trouble is with me I’ve slid into making a New York for myself that I can’t break away from unless I emigrate. My New York is Uncle Nick’s offices for as few hours a day as I can fool ’em with; and after that it’s three clubs and the Waldorf, the Holland House, Martin’s, Jack’s, two or three roulette holes, incidental bars, and sometimes the stage door of the Casino. The rest of the time I live in a hansom cab. A pretty thing, isn’t it!”

“Then why don’t you change it?”

“Because I can’t. I can’t get myself away from the crowd I’ve picked up, and that’s the life they lead. Funny, too, I don’t really like one of ’em, yet I can’t keep away from ’em because I’m in the same ruts and talk the same lingo and drink the same drinks. That’s the real trouble, I suppose, and there’s a certain future ahead of me⁠—a pleasant one to look forward to!”

“What is?”

“Drunken stockbroker,” George replied with laconic despondency. “That’s me, if I live to forty.”

“I’d rather be one than buried in a mudhole on the prairie,” said Lena. “I’d rather be anything than that; yet it’s precisely what my thoughtful fiancé informs me I have no choice about. I think perhaps he’ll learn whether I have or not, though!”

“Better think it over,” George advised, with a thoughtful glance at his sister’s flushed and petulant face. “It might be the best thing for you.”

“What!”

“It might,” he insisted. “You’ve made a