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

“He’ll not get any of mine!” Mrs. Savage said. “I’d not be very apt to help him anyhow, after the way his wife’s treated me. He wouldn’t listen to me; he would marry her, and he would throw all he had away on that miserable old farm! Now I guess he’s got nothing more to throw away.”

“He’s got rather less than nothing now, grandma. The place wouldn’t sell for enough to pay the mortgages, and he hasn’t been able to meet the interest. Father managed to let him have a thousand dollars two months ago, but it didn’t go very far. The truth is, I think Dan’s begun to be a little out of his head over the thing;⁠—he had twenty teams hauling dirt while poor father’s thousand lasted. Now he’s going to lose the place, and I’d think it a fortunate misfortune if I believed he’d learn anything by it; but he won’t.”

“No,” Mrs. Savage agreed gloomily. “He’s like his grandfather, but he hasn’t got a wife to watch over him as his grandfather had. He’ll just be up to some new wastefulness.”

“He already is,” Harlan laughed. “You’re extraordinary, the way you put your finger on things, grandma. He’s already up to a new wastefulness.”

“What is it?”

“Horseless carriages,” Harlan informed her. “Automobiles;⁠—‘les autos,’ I believe the French call them now. Since old Shelby wouldn’t run a car line out to the farm, and the city council wouldn’t build a street to the city boundary, and the county wouldn’t improve the road, Dan’s got the really magnificent idea that his Ornaby place could be reached by automobiles. He believes if the things could be made cheap enough everybody that’s going to live in Ornaby Addition could own one and go back and forth in it. And besides, he expects to build some horseless omnibuses to run out there from town.”

“He expects to?” Mrs. Savage cried, aghast. “He’s just about to lose everything, yet he expects to manufacture horseless carriages and omnibuses?”

“Oh, yes,” Harlan said easily. “He doesn’t know he’s bankrupt! To hear him you’d think he’s just beginning to make his fortune and create great public works.”

“Jehoshaphat!” In a few extremities during her long life Mrs. Savage had sought an outlet for her emotions in this expression; and after using it now she lay silent for some moments; then gave utterance to a dry little gasp of laughter. “I guess it’s a good thing I’ve made a new will! Maybe this girl might have sense enough to clear out.”

“Lena?” Harlan asked, for his grandmother’s voice was little more than a whisper, as if she spoke to herself; and he was not sure of her words. “Do you mean you think Lena might leave Dan?”

“If he didn’t have any money she might. What did she marry him for? She’s hated being married to him, hasn’t she? She must have believed he had money.”

Harlan shook his head. “No,” he said thoughtfully;⁠—“I don’t believe she’s mercenary. I don’t think that’s why she married him.”

“Can’t you use your reason?” the old lady complained petulantly. “Hasn’t she whined and scolded every minute since he brought her here?”

“Oh, it’s not so bad as that, grandma.”

“Your mother says she stays in her room for days at a time.”

“Yes, she gets spells when she’s moody⁠—or at least just quiet,” Harlan admitted. “But she’s not always in them by any means. She’s rather amusing sometimes, and she seems to try to be kind to Dan.”

“Oh, she ‘seems to try?’ ” Mrs. Savage echoed. “You seem to try to stand up for her! Do you like her?”

Faced with this abrupt question, Harlan was somewhat disturbed. “Well, possibly not,” he replied honestly, after a moment. “No, I can’t say I do.”

“I thought not. And does she like any of you?”

“Well, she’s evidently rather fond of mother⁠—and of father, too.”

“Who on earth could help liking them?” Mrs. Savage cried, and, in her vehemence, seemed about to rise from her bed. “Do you think that’s to her credit? She hates everybody and everything else here, and she nags Dan. That means she thought he had money, and she married him for it, and now she’s disappointed. Well, she’ll keep on being disappointed a good while, so far as my property is concerned! Then maybe she’ll have sense enough to leave him and give him a chance to get the woman he ought to’ve married in the first place.”

Harlan looked a little startled as his grandmother sank back, panting with exhaustion; the spirit within her was too high and still too passionate for the frail material left to it. The self of her was indeed without age, unaltered, and as dominant as it had ever been, though the instrument through which it communicated, her strengthless body, was almost perished out of any serviceableness. To her grandson there came an odd comparison: it seemed to him that she was like a vigorous person shouting through an almost useless telephone that could make only the tiniest, just perceptible sounds; and he had an odder thought than this: When the telephone was entirely broken and silent would she still be trying to shout through it? She would be shouting somewhere, he felt sure. But what he said, rather sadly, was, “Martha? I suppose you mean Martha Shelby?”

“Of course! Martha could make something out of Dan, and she’s never looked at anybody but him, and she never will. You needn’t expect her to, either, young man.”

Harlan’s colour heightened at this, and some shadows of sensitiveness about his mouth became quickly more visible. “Oh, no; of course I don’t,” he said quietly.

“She’ll never marry you,” the terrible old lady went on. “I know what you’ve been up to⁠—I’ve had my eyes about me⁠—but you’ll never get her to quit thinking of Dan. And if this painted-up photograph girl takes her baby and goes away some day, things might have a chance to come out right. But you, young man⁠—” She stopped, beset by a little cough as feeble as a baby’s, yet enough