So Big by Edna Ferber (read books for money .txt) 📕

from much grubbing in the soil, had taken on something of the look of the gnarled things they tended. The nails were short, discoloured, broken. The palms rough, calloused. The whole story of the last twelve years of Selina’s life was written in her two hands.

“I want to stay here, and work the farm, and make it pay. I can. By next spring my asparagus is going to begin to bring in money. I’m not going to grow just the common garden stuff any more⁠—not much, anyway. I’m going to specialize in the fine things⁠—the kind the South Water Street commission men want. I want to drain the low land. Tile it. That land hasn’t been used for years. It ought to be rich growing land by now, if once it’s properly drained. And I want Dirk to go to school. Good schools. I never want my son to go to the Haymarket. Never. Never.”

Julie stirred with a little rustle and click of silk and beads. Her gentle amiability was vaguely alarmed by the iron quality of determination in the other’s tone.

“Yes, but what about you, Selina?”

“Me?”

“Yes, of course. You talk as though you didn’t count. Your life. Things to make you happy.”

“My life doesn’t count, except as something for Dirk to use. I’m done with anything else. Oh, I don’t mean that I’m discouraged, or disappointed in life, or anything like that. I mean I started out with the wrong idea. I know better now. I’m here to keep Dirk from making the mistakes I made.”

Here Aug Hempel, lounging largely in his chair and eyeing Selina intently, turned his gaze absently through the window to where the grays, a living equine statue, stood before the house. His tone was one of meditation, not of argument. “It don’t work out that way, seems. About mistakes it’s funny. You got to make your own; and not only that, if you try to keep people from making theirs they get mad.” He whistled softly through his teeth following this utterance and tapped the chair seat with his finger nails.

“It’s beauty!” Selina said then, almost passionately. Aug Hempel and Julie plainly could make nothing of this remark so she went on, eager, explanatory. “I used to think that if you wanted beauty⁠—if you wanted it hard enough and hopefully enough⁠—it came to you. You just waited, and lived your life as best you could, knowing that beauty might be just around the corner. You just waited, and then it came.”

“Beauty!” exclaimed Julie, weakly. She stared at Selina in the evident belief that this work-worn haggard woman was bemoaning her lack of personal pulchritude.

“Yes. All the worthwhile things in life. All mixed up. Rooms in candlelight. Leisure. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People⁠—all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth⁠—growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to⁠—to make something fine come of it.” The word self-expression was not in cant use then, and Selina hadn’t it to offer them. They would not have known what she meant if she had. She threw out her hands now in a futile gesture. “That’s what I mean by beauty. I want Dirk to have it.”

Julie blinked and nodded with the wise amiable look of comprehension assumed by one who has understood no single word of what has been said. August Hempel cleared his throat.

“I guess I know what you’re driving at Selina, maybe. About Julie I felt just like that. She should have everything fine. I wanted her to have everything. And she did, too. Cried for the moon she had it.”

“I never did have it Pa, any such thing!”

“Never cried for it, I know of.”

“For pity’s sake!” pleaded Julie, the literal, “let’s stop talking and do something. My goodness, anybody with a little money can have books and candles and travel around and look at pictures, if that’s all. So let’s do something. Pa, you’ve probably got it all fixed in your mind long ago. It’s time we heard it. Here Selina was one of the most popular girls in Miss Fister’s school, and lots of people thought the prettiest. And now just look at her!”

A flicker of the old flame leaped up in Selina. “Flatterer!” she murmured.

Aug Hempel stood up. “If you think giving your whole life to making the boy happy is going to make him happy you ain’t so smart as I took you for. You go trying to live somebody else’s life for them.”

“I’m not going to live his life for him. I want to show him how to live it so that he’ll get full value out of it.”

“Keeping him out of the Haymarket if the Haymarket’s the natural place for him to be won’t do that. How can you tell! Monkeying with what’s to be. I’m out at the yards every day, in and out of the cattle pens, talking to the drovers and herders, mixing in with the buyers. I can tell the weight of a hog and what he’s worth just by a look at him, and a steer, too. My son-in-law Michael Arnold sits up in the office all day in our plant, dictating letters. His clothes they never stink of the pens like mine do.⁠ ⁠… Now I ain’t saying anything against him, Julie. But I bet my grandson Eugene”⁠—he repeated it, stressing the name so that you sensed his dislike of it⁠—“Eugene, if he comes into the business at all when he grows up, won’t go within smelling distance of the yards. His office I bet will be in a new office building on, say Madison Street, with a view of the lake. Life! You’ll be hoggin’ it all yourself and not know it.”

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Julie interposed. “He goes on like that. Old yards!”

August Hempel bit off the end of a cigar, was about to spit out the speck explosively, thought better of it and tucked it in his vest pocket. “I