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

think I imagined it; because I’ve asked everybody I know, pretty near, and not one of ’em said they ever heard of a baby only four weeks old that could⁠—”

“Stop!” she protested. “I didn’t send for you to talk about your baby.”

“But, grandma, if you’d just let me bring him to see you⁠—”

“I don’t want to hear anything about him, and I’ve only got one thing to say about him myself. You better not let him listen to his mother when he learns to talk, or to Harlan either⁠—not if you want to save him from that affected Eastern way of talking. You’ve had enough to do with Eastern people, young man! You take care of yourself and have as little to do with ’em after this as you can manage. They may seem mighty fine and highty-tighty, and let you think it’s a great thing to be in with ’em, but all they’re after is to get something out of you; and after they’ve got it, they’ll give you the go-by quick enough! Now I haven’t got strength enough to talk very long, and I don’t want to talk any more about your baby.”

“All right,” he said submissively. “What do you want to talk about, grandma?”

She turned her head on the pillow to look at him; and it seemed to him that her eyes were vague, as if they found him indistinct;⁠—she frowned plaintively in an effort to see him more clearly, and was silent for a time.

“It’s Dan, is it?” she said finally.

“Why, yes, grandma,” he answered in surprise. “We’ve just been talkin’ about the baby, grandma; and how much better you are and everything.”

“I know,” she returned with a feeble petulance. “I know what we’re talking about. I wanted you to come tonight because I want to tell you something.”

“Yes, grandma?”

“It’s this,” she said; then closed her eyes, and when she opened them, asked again: “Is it Dan?”

“Why, yes, of course, grandma! You just said⁠—”

“I know what I said! I wanted to tell you⁠—to tell you⁠—”

“Yes, grandma,” he said, and added indulgently, “Tell me anything you like to.”

“I wanted to tell you not to mind,” she went on. “You mustn’t mind anything that happens. I mean anything I have to do with.”

“No; of course,” he returned without any idea of what she might mean. “Of course I won’t. I won’t mind it.”

“You must be sure not to,” she insisted. “You won’t understand, but you mustn’t let it make you feel hurt with me. You mustn’t⁠—”

“Of course I won’t. Why, I’d never dream of feelin’ hurt with you about anything in the world, grandma.”

“Listen, Dan. I’ve always liked you best since you were a little boy. If you don’t understand something that happens, you remember I said this, will you? What may happen is for your own good and to help you, though it may seem just the other way to you. Will you promise to remember?”

“Of course,” he returned promptly; but she was not satisfied.

“No; I want you to think what you’re saying. You speak too quickly to make me sure you’ll remember. Say it slower, Dan. Say, ‘I promise to remember.’ ”

“I promise to remember,” he repeated slowly, to indulge this whim of hers; and then asked, “To remember what, grandma?”

“What I’ve just told you. That’s all I have to say, Dan.”

“All right, grandma;⁠—I hope I haven’t stayed long enough to tire you,” he said, and patted her hand as he rose. “I expect you want to drowse a little now. Good night, grandma.”

“Goodbye,” she said. And her cold and bent fingers feebly clasped his hand, giving it an impulse which he allowed it to follow until he found it resting against her cheek. “Dear boy!” she said faintly; and he was touched by this, the first caress she had given him since he was a child. She retained his hand, keeping it against her cheek a moment longer; then relinquished it gently and said “Goodbye” again.

“Not ‘goodbye,’ grandma,” he protested heartily. “ ‘Good night,’ not ‘goodbye.’ You are better, and the doctor himself says so. Why, by next week⁠—”

“Next week?” she said in the faintest voice in the world and with the remotest shadow of an elfin smile to herself. “Next week? Yes. You can⁠—you can bring the baby to see me⁠—next week.”

She just reached the end of that permission, her voice was so infinitely small and so drowsy; and her eyes closed before the last word;⁠—she seemed to fall asleep even while she spoke. Dan tiptoed out, nodding to the nurse, who had been close at hand in the hall and came into the room as he left it.

Downstairs he found the courteous Nimbus waiting, as always, to unlatch the front door. But tonight the elderly servitor was solemn and unloquacious beyond his custom. “Goo’-ni’, suh,” he said. “I reckon you’ grammaw ’bout ready to let that big door swing. Yes, suh. Goo’-ni’, suh.”

Dan walked home, wondering what door Nimbus conceived himself to be talking about, and wondering more what his grandmother had meant him to remember. But at his own door he was abruptly enlightened upon Nimbus’s meaning about a “big” one. Harlan met him there and told him that the nurse had just telephoned.

Mrs. Savage would never explain what she had asked him to remember; she would never explain anything⁠—never, forever.

XVII

The day after her funeral Mr. Oliphant brought home a copy of her will and read it to his wife and their sons and daughter-in-law in the library. He read slowly, while his four auditors sat in a silence broken only once, though the document was a long one. The single interruption was a vocal sound from Dan when the bequest to himself was mentioned, an exclamation the import of which was not determinable by the others.

But before the reading Mr. Oliphant made some introductory remarks as he wiped his glasses: The estate appeared to be “somewhat larger than anticipated,” he said, as Mrs. Savage’s boxes in the bank’s deposit vaults contained