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

his coat sleeve with her folded fan of black feathers. “Hush! People will hear you!”

“You fear it may be suspected that I’m still serious in my intentions?”

“Hush!” she said again. “I mean we’re about to hear some serious music, and it’s no time for nonsense.”

Harlan was obedient; he said no more, but brightened as he listened to the serious music;⁠—her tone had been kind and he hoped that he was not mistaken in thinking he detected something a little self-conscious in it. He was no eager lover now; his bachelorhood was pleasant to him; and he could be content with it; but as Martha leaned forward to listen he looked sidelong at her and felt that he had been right and wise to wish for no other woman. They had been companions for so long, and understood each other so well, marriage would be no disturbing change for either of them. He was assured of happiness in it, if he could persuade her, and something in the way she had just spoken to him made him almost sure that he was about to persuade her at last.

After the first suite by the orchestra the great Venable appeared, making his way among the seated musicians and coming forward with an air of affability operatic in its sweeping expressiveness⁠—a pale, handsome, black-haired man of grand dimensions. He needed no costume other than his black clothes and shapely ampleness of white front to make him seem, not an actual man, but a figure from romantic drama, a dweller in enchanted palaces and the master of heroic passions.

“I’ve always wanted to see one of those splendid, big, statuesque opera or concert people at home,” Martha whispered to her escort. “I’ve never been near them except when they moved on the grand scale, like this. It would be an experience to see a man like that eat an egg⁠—I can’t imagine it at all. Do you suppose he could?”

A moment later, when he began to sing, she was sure he couldn’t; and as the magnificent instrument in his throat continued in operation, he carried her to such thrilling grandeurs of feeling that she could not even imagine herself eating an egg, or eating anything, or ever again doing anything commonplace⁠—for while he sang she, too, dwelt in enchanted palaces, moved on the grand scale, and knew only heroic emotions.

But when he had finished the encore he was generous enough to add to this part of his programme, and had left the stage, she underwent a reaction not unusual after such stimulations. “It’s a great voice and he’s a great artist, if I’m equal to knowing either,” she said. “But there’s something about that man⁠—I don’t know what, except it all seems to end in being about himself. It’s so personal, somehow. I’m positive he made every woman in the whole audience wish that he were singing just for her alone. I don’t think music ought to be like that, unless perhaps sometimes when it’s a love-song, and those things he sang weren’t supposed to⁠—” She broke off suddenly, as her glance wandered. “There’s Dan. He got here, after all.”

Dan was coming down the outer aisle to the box where Lena sat; and with him was the younger Sam Kohn, the two having just entered the theatre after the business conference that had detained them. Sam was talking hurriedly and earnestly in husky whispers, which he emphasized with many quick gestures; but he left his tall companion at the curtains of the latter’s box.

“See you right after the show,” he said, and then went slowly to the series of boxes occupied by his father and brother and their families, while Dan, who looked sallow and tired, Martha thought, stared after him for a moment, then moved forward and seated himself beside George McMillan. Lena gave her husband the greeting of a slightly lifted eyebrow, shown to him in profile; but McMillan leaned toward him and whispered an anxious question.

“It’s all right,” Dan said. “Sam Kohn’s got his father’s promise to hold out against ’em. They want every inch of Ornaby I’ve got left⁠—that’s what they’ve really been after a long time. I’d like to see anybody get Ornaby away from me! They want the Four, too, and they think they’ve got both; but they won’t get either. The Kohns’ll play it through on my⁠—”

But Lena stopped this inappropriate talk of mere business. She made a slight gesture with her lovely little bare arm, her fingers flashing impatient sparks; and Dan was silent. He remained so throughout the rest of the concert, listening with an expression not unamiable, though at times his big face, lately grown flaccid and heavier, fell into the shapings that indicate drowsiness; and once or twice his glance was vaguely troubled, happening to rest upon the white contours of his wife’s shoulders;⁠—her glittering black scarf had fallen as she leaned forward when the godlike baritone came out again.

“That fellow looks kind of soft-soapy, but he’s got a crackin’ good voice,” was Dan’s placid comment, at the conclusion of the last encore of the final number. Venable was withdrawing from the stage, and most of the audience were getting on their wraps; but an admiring and avaricious gallery demanded more of the charmer, and clapped on. He stopped, shook his head, smilingly; then made his last bow profoundly and obliquely, with a shift of his large eyes in the same direction. “Not bowin’ to us, is he?” Dan inquired, surprised. “I don’t know him.”

“I do,” Lena said, “I told you the other day I used to know him. I’m going around to speak to him.”

“I can’t wait, I’m afraid. Sam Kohn’s lookin’ for me in the lobby now, and he and I got to have a talk with his father. You take the car, Lena⁠—I’ll leave it in front for you, and I’ll get Sam to drive me home from old man Kohn’s. I’ll have to hurry.”

McMillan was looking at his sister darkly and