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

“Here you are, dearie,” he said gayly. “Jellied chicken, cold as ice, and iced tea and ice-cold salad. Not a thing hot except some nice crisp toast. You’ll feel like running a footrace after you eat it, Lena!”

She spoke without moving, keeping her face away from him. “Are those women still downstairs?”

“Who?”

“Your grandmother and that big girl⁠—the awful one.”

“You don’t mean⁠—”

“I asked you if they’re still in the house.”

“They’re just goin’ home, Lena. Martha told me to tell you how sorry she is you feel the heat so badly. Won’t you eat something now, please, dear?”

“No, thank you.”

“Please! You’ll feel all right again if you’ll eat something, and tomorrow morning we’ll drive out to Ornaby Addition. Then you’ll feel like a queen, Lena; because it’s all yours and you’ll see what it’s goin’ to do for us.”

“Do you think it will get us away from here?” she asked in a dead voice.

“Well, by that time,” Dan answered cheerfully, “I expect maybe you won’t want to get away.”

“ ‘By that time,’ ” she said, quoting him dismally. “You mean it’s going to be a long time?”

“Lena, I wish you’d just look at this tray. I know if you’d only look at it, you couldn’t help eating. You’d⁠—”

“Oh, hush!” she moaned, and struck her pillow a futile blow. “Someone told me once that you people out here always were trying to get everybody to eat, that you thought just eating would cure everything. I suppose you and all your family have been eating away, downstairs there, just the same as ever. It makes me die to think of it! I’ve had delirium in fevers, but I never was delirious enough to imagine a place where there wasn’t some mercy in the heat! There isn’t any here; it’s almost dusk and hotter than ever. I couldn’t any more eat than if I were some poor thing cooking alive on a grill. What on earth do you want me to eat for?”

“Well, dearie,” he said placatively. “I think it would strengthen you and make you feel so much better, maybe you’d be willing to⁠—to⁠—” He hesitated, faltering.

“To what?”

“Well, you see grandma’s so terribly old⁠—and just these last few months she’s broken so⁠—we know we can’t hope to see much more of her, dear; and so we make quite a little fuss over her when she’s able to come here. I did hope maybe you’d feel able to go down with me to tell her good night.”

At that, Lena struck the pillow again, and then again and again; she beat it with a listless desperation. “Didn’t you understand what I said to you about her?”

“Oh, yes; but I know that was just a little nervousness, Lena; you didn’t really mean it. I know you feel differently about it already.”

“No!” she cried, interrupting him sharply. “No! No!” And then, in her pain, her voice became so passionately vehement that Dan was alarmed. “No! No! No!”

“Lena! I’m afraid they’ll hear you downstairs.”

“What do I care!” she cried so loudly that Martha Shelby, in the twilight of the yard below, on her way to the gate, paused and half turned; and Dan saw her through the open window. “What do I care!” Lena screamed. “What do I care!”

“Oh, dear me!” he groaned, and though Martha hurried on he was sure that she had heard.

“I don’t care!”

“Oh, dear me!” he groaned again, and went to close the door which he had thoughtlessly left open when he came into the room. But, to his dismay, before he closed it he heard Mrs. Savage’s still sonorous voice in the hall downstairs: “No, don’t bother him. Harlan’s enough to get me home. But if I had a daughter-in-law with tantrums I’d mighty soon cure her.”

At that point Dan shut the door hurriedly, and went back to the bedside. “Lena,” he said, in great distress, “if you won’t eat anything, I just don’t see what I can do!”

“You don’t?” she asked, and turned to look at him. “It seems to me nothing could be simpler. You know perfectly well what you can do.”

“What?”

“Take me out of this. Keep your promise to me and take me abroad.”

“But I can’t, dearie,” he explained. “You see I didn’t realize it was a promise exactly, and now it’s just out of the question. You see everything we’ve got is in Ornaby Addition and so⁠—”

“Then sell it.”

“What? Why, I wouldn’t have anything left at all if I did that at this stage of the work. You see⁠—”

“Then put a mortgage on it. People can always get money by mortgages.”

Dan rubbed his forehead. “I’ve already got a mortgage on it,” he said. “That’s where the money came from I’m workin’ with now.” He sighed, then went on more cheerfully. “But just wait till you see it, Lena. We’ll drive out there first thing tomorrow morning and you’ll understand right away what a big thing you and I own together. You just wait! Why, two or three weeks from now⁠—maybe only two or three days from now⁠—you’ll be as enthusiastic over Ornaby as I am!” He leaned over her, smiling, and took her hand. “Honestly, Lena, I don’t want to brag⁠—I wouldn’t want to brag to you, the last person in the world⁠—but honestly, I believe it’s goin’ to be the biggest thing that’s ever been done in this town. You see if we can only get the city limits extended and run a boulevard out there⁠—”

But here she startled him; she snatched her hand away and burst into a convulsive sobbing that shook every inch of her. “Oh, dear!” she wailed. “I’m trapped! I’m trapped!”

This was all he could get from her during the next half hour; that she was “trapped,” repeated over and over in a heartbroken voice at intervals in the sobbing; and Dan, agonized at the sight and sound of such poignantly genuine suffering, found nothing to offer in the way of effective solace. He tried to pet her,