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

bent again to his work and kept at it with zest until after midnight. XXI

Dan did not go next day to bid the returned neighbour welcome home⁠—he thought it better to postpone the call of greeting he should have made at once. He knew he should have made it, if even out of no more than mere neighbourliness; but gradually it became postponed into the indefiniteness that means never, a postponement not without parallel when old friends of husbands return. Meanwhile, Martha was not again mentioned by either Lena or her husband; though this is only to say that she was not orally mentioned between them, but continued to be the subject of their silences. Dan did not dare to go to see her; and his own silence, when he was with his wife, was doggedly protestive, while Lena’s was inscrutable, though she sometimes gave him evidences of a faintly amused contempt. She permitted him to perceive that she despised him, but not to understand whether she despised him because he wanted to see Martha or because he was afraid to do what he wanted.

Once or twice, when he came from his long day’s work, he caught a glimpse of a white figure in the twilight of the Shelbys’ veranda, and waved his hat, and thought a hand waved to him in return; but weeks passed and limp midsummer was almost upon the town before he had speech again with the slighted lady, though the slight was always upon his conscience.

Upon a hot Sunday noon, when his father and mother returned from church, he took them to see the “carpenter shop” he had spent the morning making in the old summerhouse for young Henry⁠—Henry Daniel no longer, at the boy’s own vehement request. The grandparents praised the “carpenter shop” but chided their son for staying away from church to construct it, and their grandson for missing Sunday-school. Dan laughed; he had not been to church in a year; and Henry distorted the cherubic rotundities of his small face into as much ferocity as he could accomplish. “I hate Sunday-school,” he declared; and, as his mother joined them just then, he seized her hand. “I don’t haf to go ’lessen I want to. You’ll never get me in that ole hole again!”

“My gracious!” Dan laughed. “It isn’t as bad as all that. You and I might decide to begin goin’ again sometime, Henry.”

“I won’t,” Henry said stoutly, and as the group moved across the lawn, returning toward the house, he clung to his mother’s hand and repeated that he didn’t “haf to.” He appealed to Lena piercingly: “I don’t haf to if I don’t want to, do I, mamma?”

“Why, no,” his father assured him. “Of course you don’t. It wouldn’t do you much good, I expect, if you don’t like it. You needn’t fret, Henry. I guess you’ll be a good enough boy without Sunday-school.”

“I expect so, maybe,” Mr. Oliphant agreed, chuckling at his grandson’s vehemence. “It’s a good thing your grandmother Savage can’t hear you, though, Dan. I never did know what she really believed; in fact, I rather suspect she was an agnostic in her heart⁠—but she’d have been shocked to hear you letting your offspring out of Sunday-school⁠—or anything else⁠—merely because he doesn’t like it.”

“I expect she would, sir,” Dan said. “But all that’s changed since her day. People don’t believe in⁠—” He stopped speaking and moving simultaneously, and stood staring out at the sidewalk where his brother and Martha Shelby, walking slowly, were returning from church.

“People don’t believe in what?” Mr. Oliphant inquired, stopping also.

“I⁠—I don’t know, sir,” Dan said vaguely, and he began to grow red. Harlan and Martha had turned in at the gate and were coming across the lawn to them.

Martha went first to Lena. “I haven’t had a chance to say ‘Howdy-do’ to you since I came back,” she said easily. “I’m ever so glad to see you again.” Then she turned to Dan, and gave him her hand with a cordial emphasis of gesture. “It’s fine to see you again, too, Dan. I want to congratulate you about Ornaby Addition. You’ll have to look out, though.”

“I will?” Dan said and added awkwardly, “Well⁠—well, the⁠—the truth is, I’m mighty glad to see you. I mean we’re all glad you’re back home again, Martha.” He was visibly in a state of that almost certain contagion, embarrassment, and so flounderingly that he was embarrassing. He dropped Martha’s cordial hand almost as soon as he touched it, and at the same instant turned upon his wife a look of helpless apprehension that would have revealed everything, if revelation were needed. But Lena showed herself as little disconcerted as the steady Martha was; and the look she sent back to her husband held in it something of the hostile examination that had come into her eyes on the evening after Martha’s return, though now it was accompanied by a bright glint almost hilariously jeering. It was strikingly successful in effect. Dan gulped, then he stammered: “How⁠—how do you⁠—how do you mean I must look out, Martha?”

She laughed cheerfully. “I mean you must look out for some of those wicked old men downtown. You tried to get them to come in with you at the start, but they wouldn’t, and pretty soon they’re going to be furious that they let the chance slip. They’ll try to get Ornaby away from you, Dan.” She turned to the little boy, who had been silenced for a moment by the arrival of this stranger. “I ought to know you,” she said. “That’s why I stopped on my way home: I wanted to meet you. I live next door. Will you shake hands?”

“No,” Henry replied, because his momentary shyness had passed and he felt that this refusal would help to restore the conspicuousness he had been enjoying as the owner of a new “carpenter shop” and a rebel against Sunday-school. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to shake