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

be an uncle, and so far I haven’t been worrying about his future. Don’t you think there’s a chance for him?”

“Not with such a mother and father,” the old lady promptly replied. “Dan oughtn’t to have mixed with such a stock as that painted-up little photograph girl.”

Harlan protested a little; coming to Lena’s defense at least in this detail. “But I understand that the particular foible of the McMillan family is the magnificence of their stock, as you call it, grandma. It seems they’re so proud of it they don’t think of much else.”

“Yes; that’s always a sign a stock’s petered out. When people put a lot on what their folks used to do, it always means they haven’t got gimp enough left to do anything themselves. The minute I laid eyes on her picture I knew she came from a no-account stock; and when your mother gave her that reception everybody in town could tell right off what she was. Painted! That tells the story!”

Again Harlan protested on behalf of his sister-in-law. “Oh, I shouldn’t make too much of that, grandma. A little rouge now and then⁠—”

“ ‘A little rouge!’ ” the old lady echoed satirically. “She was plastered with it! That doesn’t make any difference though, because a woman that uses it at all is a bad woman and wants the men to know it.”

“Oh, no, no!”

“It’s so,” the old lady cried as fiercely as her enfeebled voice permitted. “It’s the truth, and you’ll live to see I’m right. I don’t want you to forget then that I told you so. You remember it, Harlan.”

“Yes, grandma,” he said placatively. “I will if⁠—”

“I don’t want any ‘if’ about it. You remember what I’m telling you! She’s bad!” Mrs. Savage spoke so vehemently that she had to pause and let her quickened breathing become more regular;⁠—then she went on: “Look how she’s treated me. If she’d had the right stuff in her, she’d have been grateful to me for giving her a lesson. If she’d been just a foolish girl who’d made a mistake and painted herself because she wanted to look healthier when she met her new husband’s friends, why, she might have got a little pettish with me for showing her it was a mistake the way I did, but long before now she’d have forgiven me and thanked me for doing it. Not she! That was the last time I set foot out of doors; and has she ever come to see me? She’s never been near me! What’s more, she’s done her best to keep Dan from ever coming here. When he has come I know he hasn’t dared to tell her. Do you deny it?”

Harlan shook his head. “No, I’m afraid I can’t, grandma.”

“Do you know why she hates me so?” the old lady demanded. “It’s because she’s bad, and she knows I know it. People never forgive you for knowing they’re bad. And now she’s brought this baby into the world to inherit her badness, and you sit there and wonder I say the child’s bound to turn out wrong.”

“Grandma!” the young man exclaimed, laughing. “I only wonder you don’t take into account the fact that the baby is Dan’s, too. Dan may be a rather foolish sort of person⁠—in fact, I think he is⁠—but surely you’ve never thought him bad.”

The old lady looked at her grandson querulously. “Don’t be so superior, young man. That’s always been your trouble⁠—you think you’re the only perfect person in the world.” And when he would have protested, defending himself, she checked him sharply and went on: “Never mind! I’m talking about other things now. The trouble with Dan is that he’s never seen anything as it really is and never will⁠—not in all the days of his life! He was that way even when he was a boy. I remember once you hurt his feelings about some poor little brackets he was making with a little Jew boy. He thought the brackets were perfect, and he thought the little Jew boy was perfect, too. When you criticized them both he got into such a spasm of crying he had to go home to bed.”

“Yes,” Harlan said, smiling faintly; “I remember. He was always like that.”

“Yes, and always will be. So he’ll think this child of his is perfect, and it’ll never get any discipline. I’d like to live twenty years just to see the wrack and ruin that’s going to be made by these children born nowadays. Their parents got hardly any discipline at all, and they won’t get any, so they’ll never know how to respect anything at all. It only takes a little common sense to see from the start how this child’ll turn out. With no discipline or respect for anything, and with such a mother from a petered-out stock, and a father that hasn’t got a practical thought in his head, you can just as well as not expect the child to be in the penitentiary by the time he’s twenty years old!” Then, as Harlan laughed, the old lady uttered a faint sound of laughter herself, not as if admitting that she exaggerated anything, however, but grimly. “You’ll see!”

“You’re right about it this far,” Harlan said. “Dan already thinks the baby’s perfect.”

“Happy, is he?”

“The usual triumphant young father. More triumphant than the usual one, I should say. He went whooping over the house till mother had to stop him and send him outdoors to keep him from disturbing Lena.”

“Yes; that’s like him,” the old lady said. “How queer it is; there are people who can always find something to whoop about, no matter what happens. Your grandfather was like that when he was a young man. Even when we were poor as Job’s turkey he’d burst out cackling and laughing over anything at all. I used to just look at him and wonder. Dan’s desperate for money, isn’t he?”

Harlan coughed, frowned, and then looked faintly amused. “Yes, I should just about use the word ‘desperate.’