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

failure, Martha. I’ve been a failure in business⁠—and a failure as a husband⁠—and a failure as a father. George McMillan hasn’t got here with Henry yet, has he?”

“No, dear; not yet.”

Dan’s hand moved restlessly under hers, and she released it. With a visible effort he rubbed his forehead, a gesture of perplexity that hurt her and made it difficult for her to retain her appearance of cheerfulness, because this characteristic gesture brought his boyhood so vividly to her memory. “I’ve just got to have Henry back,” he said. “I’ve got to get him back so’s to do right by him. It isn’t⁠—it isn’t fair to a boy, Martha.”

“What isn’t?”

“Do you remember my grandmother Savage?”

“Of course. No one could forget her, Dan.”

“No, I guess not. Well, she”⁠—he shook his head, and half coughed, half laughed⁠—“she was right about some things. My! but wouldn’t she be sayin’, ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ if she knew what’s happened to my poor Henry! I’ve been a terrible failure with Henry, Martha.” He looked patiently at her as she denied this; and then he said abruptly: “Why, I’ve even been a failure with you, Martha!”

“That’s the absurdest thing you’ve said, dear!”

“No. I’ve been a failure as a friend, too. I let Lena fret me out of comin’ in to see you when you’d been away that long stretch. I had no business to pay any attention to her. You see⁠—why, you always really liked me better than she did, Martha!”

He spoke as if it were a discovery just made; and she assented to it, taking his hand again. “Yes, Dan. I’ve always liked you better than anybody.”

“Have you?” he said inquiringly. “Well, I’m right glad to hear it. I’m right glad to hear it, Martha.”

“Yes, dear. I always have.”

He closed his eyes, but she felt a faint pressure upon her hand from his, and sat still for a time, looking at him with fond eyes that grew frightened as the pressure upon her fingers relaxed. She was not sure, for the moment, that he was still breathing; and she looked a terrified inquiry at the grave nurse who sat on the other side of the bed. The nurse shook her head, forming with her lips the word, “Sleeping”; but Dan opened his eyes again.

“It’s curious,” he said, “the way things are. A fellow goes along, and everything seems to run all right, year after year⁠—he can hear a little kind of grindin’ noise, maybe, sometimes, or something seems to slip, but he patches it up and doesn’t let it scare him⁠—he keeps goin’ right along and everything seems to be workin’ about as usual⁠—and then one thing goes wrong⁠—and then another⁠—and then all of a sudden the whole works pile up on top of him, and he’s down under the heap!” He took his hand again from Martha’s, and again passed it tremulously over his forehead in the old familiar gesture. “Well⁠—maybe I could start in again if I can get over what ails me. I expect I need a good night’s rest first, though. Maybe I can sleep now.”

Martha went tiptoeing out, and through the hall to the room that had been Lena’s. Harlan was there, sitting close beside his mother. “He wants to sleep,” Martha told them, but had no sooner spoken than Dan’s renewed coughing was heard⁠—a sound that racked the sick man’s mother. She shivered and gasped, and then, as the convulsion became fainter, went out trembling into the hall.

“Harlan,” Martha said, “why didn’t you tell me you tried to help Dan⁠—at last?”

He rose, looking annoyed. “I didn’t do anything that was in the slightest degree a sacrifice,” he said. “I don’t want you to misunderstand it. I never helped him when I thought it would be thrown away, and I didn’t this time. He made over the new house to me, and I guess Lena’ll sign the deed; she’ll have to. In time it’ll probably be worth all I gave for it. I wasn’t going to see the name of Oliphant dragged through all the miserable notoriety of bankruptcy⁠—and there was something besides.”

“Yes?” she said. “What was that?”

“Well, a pack of old money-vultures were after him, and after all Dan’s my brother.”

“Yes, he is!” Martha said. She began to cry bitterly, but silently; then suddenly she put her arms about him. “He’s still your brother, Harlan! We can say that yet;⁠—he’s just in that room down the hall there⁠—he’s not gone away⁠—he’s still your brother, Harlan!”

But even as Martha spoke, Mrs. Oliphant, looking through the door of the sick room, cried out in terror, then rushed to her son’s bedside. Dan had unexpectedly lifted himself almost half upright; he seemed to struggle to rise; and in his eyes, wide-opened, but seeing neither his mother nor the nurse, there was a look of startled incredulity⁠—the look of one who suddenly recognizes, to his utter astonishment, an old acquaintance long since disappeared but now abruptly returned.

A moment later the uncontrolled sobbing of his mother let Harlan know that he no longer had a brother in the room down the hall.

XXXI

The war halted the wrecking of National Avenue, but not for long. Until the soldiers came home and the country could begin to get back into its great stride again, groups of the old, thick-walled, big-roomed houses were permitted to survive; and although it was a survival doomed, and the dignity of the dignified old things had begun to appear somewhat ridiculous, since they were smeared with the smoke-fog and begirt with automobile warehouses and salesbuildings and noisy garages and repair shops, and every other kind of shop and office, yet here and there was the semblance⁠—or, at least, the reminder⁠—of a fine, ample, and mannerly old street that had once been the glory of its town.

But when the great heydays came, following the collapse of the war “expansion,” and the country took up its dropped trades again, and renewed with furious and reckless energy its suppressed building,