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

Lena, wearing a bright kimono over her nightdress, made her appearance in the open doorway of her bedroom. “What is all this?” she asked petulantly.

“Never mind!”

“But I do mind! What are you saying about selling Henry’s car? Didn’t I hear you say⁠—”

“Yes, you did.” Dan closed the door of Henry’s room and came to her. “I made a terrible mistake to give it to him. We’ve both made a mistake the way we’ve raised him. He’s a good boy; he’s got a fine nature and a noble soul. But he’s got with bad companions. He’s been⁠—” He paused, and went on slowly, with difficulty: “He’s been⁠—he’s been drinkin’, Lena.”

She said nothing, but stared at him blankly for a moment⁠—then the stare became an angry one.

“We’ve got to change our whole way of treatin’ Henry,” her unhappy husband told her. “We’ve been all wrong. He⁠—he got with bad companions⁠—”

“Yes,” she interrupted angrily. “I should think he might, in a town like this!”

“My Lord! It ain’t the town’s fault. For heaven’s sake, don’t go back to that old story at a time like this!”

“Yes, I will,” she said. “The time’s come when you’ve got to let me take Henry and go where I want to.”

Dan looked dazed. “Go where you want to? Why, where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere I please!”

“But, my Lord! You were away seven months out of last year. You only got back from Europe last October! What do you⁠—”

“I want to go and I want to take Henry with me! What’s just happened proves that I’m right. This is the wrong place for him.”

“But I tell you the place hasn’t got anything on earth to do with it.”

“Hasn’t it?” she cried. “I tell you it has all to do with it, just as it’s had all to do with me ever since I came here! I’ve hated it every instant of all these silly, wasted years I’ve been pent up here. And now it’s ruining my child⁠—yes, ruining him⁠—and you want me still to stay here and let him stay here! You want me to waste the rest of my life, and ruin my child’s life, but I tell you, Dan Oliphant, you can’t make us do it⁠—not either of us! Not either of us, do you hear?” She had become hysterical, and her voice was so wild and loud that Mrs. Oliphant had come into the hall, downstairs, and was calling up piteously to know what was the matter.

“What is the matter, Dan, dear?” she called. “What is the matter with Lena?”

But Lena, shrieking, “You can’t make us⁠—you can’t make us!” ran into her room and locked the door. It was a thick old door, but she could still be heard, and it was not difficult to understand that she had thrown herself upon her bed, and was there convulsive, still shrieking: “You can’t make us! You can’t make us! You can’t, you can’t, you can’t⁠—”

XXIX

Dan reassured his mother as well as he could. “Only a fit of nerves;⁠—too much music, I guess,” he said; and, returning to his son’s door, found it locked and Henry as unresponsive as the door. The father knocked repeatedly but not loudly, demanding admittance and obtaining the response of a profound silence. Then, as he heard Mrs. Oliphant slowly ascending the stairs to her belated bed, he decided to keep out of her way until he had better composed himself, and, retiring to his own room, discovered that his teeth were chattering.

He removed his cold and sodden garments; but his bed seemed as cold as his clothes; so he got up, put a dressing-gown over his pajamas, and again tried to sleep. The bed still seemed cold⁠—so cold that his teeth still showed the disposition to chatter. However, he told himself that he had “more to worry about than a little chill”; and, between the chill and his more important worries, slept but fitfully. He was warm when the drizzly morning came⁠—too warm⁠—and, again communing with himself on the subject of his physical annoyances, philosophically dismissed the fever as unworthy of his attention. “A little temperature’s perfectly natural after a chill,” he thought. “It’ll pass off, and I’ve got other things to think about this day!”

So, descending early to the dining-room he had a cup of strong coffee, and left the house without having seen anybody except the cook and his chauffeur. The interview with his son was postponed until evening;⁠—Dan felt he would be better fitted to speak with authority after he had beaten the shellbacks and had shown the First National, with the help of the Kohns and some others, that it wouldn’t do to “call” him.

He had a hard day of it; the shells of the shellbacks were tough and seasoned casings, tough as old hickory, and about as penetrable to mere argument. The morning began ominously, and the afternoon came to a close, in the office of Sam Kohn, Junior, in something not far from complete disaster; though Sam insisted, when he and Dan were finally left alone together there, that it was not complete.

“No, sir!” he said. “The way you got a perfect right to look at it, it ain’t near as bad as it might been. Maybe from one angle you can say you come out the little end of the horn, but from another angle, you certainly did come out, you might say. You got to look at it from this angle, Dan: you might been sittin’ there stone cold broke right now. I tell you last night late, when I talked it over with the old man after you’d gone, I was mighty scared it was goin’ to be bankruptcy⁠—but it’s a lot better than that. Ain’t it better’n that, Dan?”

Dan looked up without altering the despondent attitude into which he had fallen, as he sat in one of his friend’s mahogany office chairs. “Yes; I guess it could have been a good deal worse. The only trouble is⁠—”