National Avenue - Booth Tarkington (the little red hen ebook TXT) 📗

your voice to a natural tone without gettin’ scared you’re goin’ to break a vase or something. For instance, I mean the way I feel with you, Martha. You see, with some New York people⁠—I don’t mean anything against ’em of course; but sometimes, when a person’s with ’em, he almost feels as if he ought to be artificial or unnatural or something; but nobody could ever feel anything like that with you, Martha.”

“No?” she said, and looked at him with a gravity in which there was a slight apprehension. “Perhaps you might like a little artificiality, though, just for a change. A moment ago you said you thought your New York habits would wear off, and you’d get more natural, if you stay here. What did you mean?”

“Me not natural?” he asked, surprised. “Why, don’t I seem natural?”

“Yes, of course. You wouldn’t know how not to be. You meant about your clothes. You said you’d probably get over wearing so much finery as a daily habit, if you stay here. Aren’t you going to stay here, Dan?”

Her sidelong glance at him took note of a change in his expression, a perplexity that was faintly troubled, whereupon the hint of apprehension in her own look deepened. “Don’t tell me you’re not!” she exclaimed suddenly, and as he failed to respond at once, she repeated this with emphasis so increased that it seemed a little outcry: “Don’t tell me you’re not!”

“I certainly hope to stay here,” he said seriously. “I didn’t realize how much I hoped to until I got back. I certainly would hate to leave this good old place where I grew up.”

“But why should you leave it? Your mother told me the other day you expected to go into business here as soon as you get your grandfather’s estate settled.”

“Yes, I know,” he returned, and she observed that his seriousness and his perplexity both increased. “It’s always been my idea to do that,” he went on, “and I still hope to carry it out. At any rate I’m goin’ to try to.”

“Then why don’t you? What on earth could prevent you?”

Upon this, he seemed to take a sudden resolution. “Martha,” he said, “I’ve got a notion to tell you about something;⁠—it’s something beautiful that’s happened to me. I haven’t told anybody yet. I wanted to tell my father and mother last night; but Harlan kept sittin’ around where they were, until they went to bed; and somehow I didn’t like to talk about it before him⁠—anyway not at first. And today I haven’t had a chance to tell ’em; father’s been down at his office and mother had two charity board meetings. So you’ll be the first person to know it.”

“Will I?” Martha said in a low voice.

But he did not notice its altered quality; he was too much preoccupied with what he was saying; and he still looked forward into the perplexing distance. His companion’s gaze, on the contrary, was turned steadily upon him; and the sunniness that had been in her eyes had vanished, the colour of her cheeks was not so brave in the cold air. “I’m a little afraid to hear it, Dan,” she said. “I’m afraid you’re going to say you got engaged to someone in New York. You are?”

“Yes,” he answered gravely. “That’s what I’m just on the way to tell my grandmother.”

“I guessed it,” Martha said quietly; and was silent for a moment;⁠—then she laughed. “I might have guessed it from your clothes, Dan. You got all dressed up like this just to talk about her! And to your grandmother!”

A little hurt by her laughter, he turned his head to look at her and saw that there were sudden bright lines along her eyelids. “Why, Martha!” he cried. “Why, what⁠—”

“Isn’t it natural?” she asked, smiling at him to contradict the testimony offered by her tears. “I’ve always had you for a next-door neighbour; you’ve always been my best friend among the boys I grew up with;⁠—I’m afraid I’ll lose you if you get married. Everybody likes you, Dan; I think everybody’ll feel the same way. We’ll all be afraid we’ll lose you.”

“Why, Martha!” he exclaimed again, but he had difficulty in misrepresenting a catch in his throat as a cough. “I didn’t⁠—I didn’t expect you’d think of it like this. I do hope it doesn’t mean that I’ll have to live in New York. I still hope to get her to come here. I⁠—I’d certainly hate to lose you more than you would to lose me. I’ve always thought of you as my best friend, too, and I couldn’t imagine anything making that different. I’d hoped⁠—I do hope⁠—”

“What, Dan?”

“I hope you⁠—I hope you’ll like her, if we come home to live. I hope you’ll be her friend, too.”

“Indeed I will!” she promised so earnestly that her utterance was but a husky whisper. “I’m glad I’m the first you told, Dan. Thank you.”

“No, no,” he said awkwardly. “It just happened that way.”

“Well, at least I’m glad it did,” she returned, and brushing her eyes lightly with the back of a shapely hand, showed him a cheerful countenance. “See! you had just time to tell me.”

IV

She nodded to where before them a long wooden picket fence outlined the street boundary of Mrs. Savage’s lawn. Here was an older quarter than that upper reach of National Avenue whence the two young people had come; the houses here and southward were most of them substantial and ample, but not of the imposing spaciousness prevailing farther up the avenue. Three or four of them had felt the seventies so deeply as to adopt the mansard roof in company with one or two parasite slate turrets; but in the main the houses were without pretentiousness; and among them it was curious and pleasant to see lingering two or three white, low-gabled cottages of a single story.

In the summertime old-fashioned flowers grew in the yards of these, and there might be morning-glories climbing