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

same way, no doubt, that the laugh of a jungle witch-doctor ancestor of his had awed wives not unlike Myrtle. “She ain’t goin’ bother me ner you,” he explained. “She ain’t settin’ there ’count o’ me ner you. She settin’ there ’cause she so mad.”

“Who? Who she mad at?”

“Mad at somep’m!” Nimbus would say, and, becoming less uncomfortably mystic might allow a human chuckle to escape him. “Set there mad long as she want to; ’tain’t goin’ do her no good. She ain’t fixed to make no changes now!”

The new owner lived in the old house almost as quietly as Mrs. Savage, in the visions of Nimbus, went on living there. Harlan had several times thought of going to Italy, but the idea never culminated in action.

“I wanted to come, though,” he told Martha, as they sat on her veranda that hot morning, the day after her return. “I wanted to more than I ever wanted to do anything else. You see I’ve almost stopped going to the office; I just dangle about there sometimes to please father, but I don’t care to practise law. It’s a silly way of spending one’s life after all, fighting the sordid disputes of squabbling people. There was really nothing to keep me here.”

She did not alter her attitude, but still looked out upon the old familiar unfamiliar scene from beneath her sheltering curved fingers. “If you wanted to come, why didn’t you?”

“Because I’d only have done it to see you, and I suppose I have a remnant of pride. If you’d like a better answer, think of what I told you about yourself. I didn’t come because I know you’re stony. I knew you hadn’t changed.”

“About what?”

“About me,” he said, and added: “About anything!”

At this she turned her head and looked at him, for he spoke with a sour significance. “Well, have you changed, Harlan?” she asked gravely.

“About you,” he answered. “I haven’t⁠—unfortunately.”

“But I meant: Have you changed about anything? Aren’t you just what you were five or six years ago, only a little intensified⁠—and richer?”

“Ah, I knew I’d get that,” he said. “I knew it would come before I could be with you long. I told my father and mother the very day my grandmother’s will was read that you’d hate me for it, and mother agreed quickly enough.”

“Why, no,” Martha said, and her surprise was genuine. “Why should I hate you because Mrs. Savage⁠—”

“Because she left it to me and not to Dan, and because I didn’t think it was right or sensible to help him with any of it.”

“But he hasn’t needed any help,” Martha said. “It’s much better for him to be doing it without any help, and so splendidly.”

“So splendidly?” Harlan repeated, and he stared at her. “But you don’t take what Dan says seriously, do you? You don’t think that just because he says⁠—”

“I haven’t seen him, Harlan.”

“But you speak as if you believe he’s actually succeeding in making that old fantasia of his into a reality.”

“Well,” she said, “isn’t he?”

“What? Why, he’s still just barely keeping his head above water. He sells vacant lots out there, yes⁠—but to keep on selling them he has to put all they sell for into developing the land he hasn’t sold. It amounts precisely to the same thing as giving the property away. His mortgages used to worry him to death, but he’s got most of the place mortgaged now for three times what it was five years ago. You see⁠—”

“I see that the land must be worth three times as much as it was five years ago, since he can borrow three times as much on it.”

“But, my dear Martha⁠—”

“But, my dear Harlan!” she echoed mockingly, and thus disposed of his argument before he could deliver it. “The truth is, you’ve had the habit of undervaluing Dan so long that you can’t get over it. You can’t see that at last he’s begun to make a success of his ‘fantasia.’ Given time enough, critics who aren’t careful to keep themselves humble-minded always lose the power to see things as they are.”

Harlan winced a little under this sententious assault, and laughed at himself for wincing; then explained his rather painful laughter. “It’s almost amusing to me to find myself still cowering away from your humble-minded criticisms of me⁠—just as I used to, Martha!”

“Yes, I know it,” she admitted. “I hate myself for the way I talk to you, Harlan;⁠—somehow you always make me smug and superior. I’m the foolish kind of person who’s always made critical by superior criticism⁠—critical of the critic, I mean.”

“But I’m not more critical of Dan than other people are. Have you asked your father what he thinks of Ornaby now, for instance?”

“Yes, I asked him last night.”

“What does he think of it?”

“He thinks the same as I do,” she said. “He’s been compelled to recognize that it’s going to be a tremendous success.”

“Then he’s changed his mind since last week,” Harlan returned, somewhat discomfited. “He told me⁠—”

“Oh, yes, I know,” she said. “He didn’t say he thought it would be a success. He said he thought the Addition idea was just as crazy as he ever did, and Dan Oliphant was the biggest fool in seven states, and the noisiest! Those were his words precisely, Harlan.”

“But you just told me⁠—”

“No,” she explained;⁠—“you asked me what he thought. Do you suppose he’d admit to me that he ever made a business mistake? He knows perfectly well that he did make one when he refused to follow my advice and buy some of Dan’s stock when the poor boy was trying to finance his plan at the beginning. Papa confessed it absolutely.”

“He did?”

“Certainly,” she replied. “If he’d meant what he said he’d just have grunted it. Instead, he yelled it at me. With papa, that’s exactly the same as a perfectly open confession.”

Harlan shook his head, remaining more than doubtful of this interpretation. “So you believe if Dan tried now to organize a stock company for Ornaby⁠—”

“They’d gobble it!”