The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress Page 5

  No, this was a thought that could not come to her to really think, and so for her the warnings of her father carried no real truth. Of course Alfred Hersland was a good and honest man. All decent men, all men who belonged to her own kind and to whom she could by any chance belong, were good and straight. They had this as they had all simple rights in a sane and simple world. Hersland had besides that he was brilliant, that he knew that there were things of beauty in the world, and that he was in his bearing and appearance a distinguished man. And then over and above all this, he was so freely passionate in his fervent love.

  And so the marriage was really to be made. Mrs. Dehning now all reconciled and eager, began the trousseau and the preparation of the house that the young couple were to have as a wedding portion from the elder Dehnings.

  In dresses, hats and shoes and gloves and underwear, and jewel ornaments, Julia was very ready to follow her mother in her choice and to agree with her in all variety and richness of trimming in material, but in the furnishing of her own house it must be as she wished, taught as she now had been that there were things of beauty in the world and that decoration should be strange and like old fashions, not be in the new. To have the older things themselves had not yet come to her to know, nor just how old was the best time that they should be. It was queer in its results this mingling of old taste and new desire.

  The mother was all disgusted, half-impressed; she sneered at these new notions to her daughter and bragged of it to all of her acquaintance. She followed Julia about now from store to store, struggling to put in a little her own way, but always she was beaten back and overborne by the eagerness of knowing and the hardness of unconsidering disregard with which her daughter met her words.

  The wedding day drew quickly near with all this sharp endeavor of making her new home just what it should be for the life which was to come. Julia thought more of her ideals these days than of her man. Hersland had always, a little, meant more to her as an ideal than as a creature to be known and loved. She had made him, to herself, as she was now making her new house, an unharmonious unreality, a bringing complicated natural tastes to the simplicities of fitness and of decoration of a self-digested older world.

  I say again, this was all twenty years ago before the passion for the simple line and toned green burlap on the wall and wooden panelling all classic and severe. But the moral force was making then, as now, in art, all for the simple line, though then it had not come to be, as now alas it is, that natural sense for gilding and all kinds of paint and complicated decoration in design all must be suppressed and thrust away, and so take from us the last small hope that something real might spring from crudity and luxury in ornament. In those days there was still some freedom left to love elaboration in good workmanship and ornate rococoness and complication in design. And all the houses of one's friends and new school rooms and settlements in slums and dining halls and city clubs, had not yet taken on this modern sad resemblance to a college woman's college room.

  Julia Dehning's new house was in arrangement a small edition of her mother's. In ways to wash, to help out all the special doctors in their work, in sponges, brushes, running water everywhere, in hygienic ways to air things and keep ones self and everything all clean, this house that Julia was to make fit for her new life which was to come, in this it was very like the old one she had lived in, but always here there were more plunges, douches, showers, ways to get cold water, luxury in freezing, in hardening, than her mother's house had ever afforded to them. In her mother's house there were many ways to get clean but they mostly suggested warm water and a certain comfort, here in the new house was a sterner feeling, it must be a cold world, that one could keep one's soul high and clean in.

  All through this new house there were no solid warm substantial riches. There were no silks in curtains, no blue brocade here, no glass chandeliers to make prisms and give tinklings. Here the parlor was covered with modern sombre tapestry, the ceiling all in tone the chairs as near to good colonial as modern imitation can effect, and all about dark aesthetic ornaments from China and Japan. Paintings there were none, only carbon photographs framed close, in dull and wooden frames.

  The dining room was without brilliancy, for there can be no brilliance in a real aesthetic aspiration. The chairs were made after some old french fashion, not very certain what, and covered with dull tapestry, copied without life from old designs, the room was all a discreet green with simple oaken wood-work underneath. The living rooms were a prevailing red, that certain shade of red like that certain shade of green, dull, without hope, the shade that so completely bodies forth the ethically aesthetic aspiration of the spare American emotion. Everywhere were carbon photographs upon the walls sadly framed in painted wooden frames. Free couches, open book-cases, and fire places with really burning logs, finished out each room.

  These were triumphant days for Julia. Every day she led her family a new flight and they followed after agape with wonderdisapproval and with pride. The mother almost lost all sense of her creation of this original and brilliant daughter, she was almost ready to admit the obedience and defeat she now had in her. Sometimes she still had a little resistance to her but mostly she was swelling inside and to all around her with her admiration and her pride in this new wonderful kind of a daughter.

  The father had always been convinced and proud even when he had disapproved the opinions of his daughter. He now took a solid satisfaction in the completeness of accomplishment she now had in her. To her father, to know well what one wanted, and to win it, by patient steady fighting for it, was the best act a man or woman could accomplish, and well had his daughter done it. She had won it, she knew very well what she wanted and she had it. He still shook his head at her new fangled notions, her literary effects, the artistic kind of new improvement, as he called it, that she put into her new house to make it perfect. He did not understand it and he always said it, but he was very proud to see her do it, and he bragged to everybody and made them listen to it, of his daughter and the wonderful new kind of a house she had, and the bright way she knew how to do it.

  The little Hortense had always worshipped this wonderful big sister, and the boy George admired too, and followed after.

  Altogether these last weeks were brilliant days for Julia.

  But always, a little, through all this pride in domination and in the admiration of her family, there was there, somewhere, in the background, to her sense, a vague uncertain kind of feeling as to her understanding and her right. Mostly she had a firm strong feeling in her, but always, a little, there was there, a kind of a doubting somewhere in her. She never in these days did any very real thinking about Hersland as a man to be to her as a husband to control her. But, somehow, a little, he was there in her as an unknown power that might attack her, though she knew very well she had in her a wisdom and experience of life that she could feel strong now always inside her.

  A few weeks before the day they were to be married and to begin their new free life together, this vague distrust in Julia became a little sharper. Alfy was talking to her one night about the good life they were to have soon together, about their prospects and his hopes for the future. “I've some good schemes Julia in my head,” he said to her, “and I mean to do big things, and with a safe man like your father to back me through now I think I can.” Julia somehow was startled though this kind of saying in him was not new to her. “Why what do you mean Alfy?” “Why,” he went on, “I want to do some things that have big money and big risks in them and a man as well known as your father for wealth and reliability for a father-in-law will do all that I need. Of course you know Julia,” be added very simply enough for her, “you must not talk to him about such things now. You are my wife, my own darling, and you and I will live our lives together always loving and believing in the same good thing.”

  He said it simply enough to her and he was safe. Julia would not speak of such things now to her father. No torment of doubt, no certainty of misery could bring he
r to ask questions of her father, now, about the new life she had before her. Hersland was safe, though very simply now, he often made for her that sharp uncertain feeling more dreadful and more clear before her. He was not different in his ways or in his talk to her from the way he always had been with her, but somehow now it had come to her, to see, as dying men are said to see, clearly and freely things as they are and not as she had wished them to be for her.

  And then she would remember suddenly what she had really thought he was, and she felt, she knew that all that former thought was truer better judgment than this sudden sight, and so she dulled her momentary clearing mind and hugged her old illusions to her breast.

  “Alfy didn't mean it like that,” she said over to herself, “he couldn't mean it like that. He only meant that papa would help him along in his career and of course papa will. Oh I know he didn't really mean it like that, he couldn't mean it like that. Anyhow I will ask him what he really meant.”

  And she asked him and he freely made her understand just what it was he meant. It sounded better then, a little better as he told it to her more at length, but it left her a foreboding sense that perhaps the world had meanings in it that could be hard for her to understand and judge.

  But now she had to think that it was all, as it had a little sounded, good and best. She had to think it so else how could she marry him, and how could she not marry him. She had to marry him, and so she had to think it so, and she would think it so, and did.

  In a few days more the actual marrying was done and their lives together always doing things and learning things was at last begun.

  Bear it in your mind my reader, but truly I never feel it that there ever can be for me any such a creature, no it is this scribbled and dirty and lined paper that is really to be to me always my receiver—but anyhow reader, bear it in your mind—will there be for me ever any such a creature—what I have said always before to you, that this that I write down a little each day here on my scraps of paper for you is not just an ordinary kind of novel with a plot and conversations to amuse you, but a record of a decent family progress respectably lived by us and our fathers and our mothers, and our grand-fathers, and grandmothers, and this is by me carefully a little each day to be written down here; and so my reader arm yourself in every kind of a way to be patient, and to be eager, for you must always have it now before you to hear much more of these many kinds of decent ordinary people, of old, grown, grand-fathers and grand-mothers, of growing old fathers and growing old mothers, of ourselves who are always to be young grown men and women for us, and then there are still to be others and we must wait and see the younger fathers and young mothers bear them for us, these younger fathers and young mothers who always are ourselves inside us, who are to be always young grown men and women to us. And so listen while I tell you all about us, and wait while I hasten slowly forwards, and love, please, this history of this decent family's progress.

  Yes it is a misfortune we have inside us, some few of us, I cannot deny it to you, all you others, it is true the simple interest I take in my family's progress. I have it, this interest in ordinary middle class existence, in simple firm ordinary middle class traditions, in sordid material unaspiring visions, in a repeating, common, decent enough kind of living, with no fine kind of fancy ways inside us, no excitements to surprise us, no new ways of being bad or good to win us.

  You see, it is just an ordinary middle class tradition we must use to understand this family's progress. There must be no aspiring thoughts inside us, there must be a feeling always in us of being in a kind of way in business always honest, there must be in a kind of ordinary way always there inside us the sense of decent enough ways of living for us. Yes I am strong to declare that I have it, here in the heart of this high, aspiring, excitement loving people who despise it,—I throw myself open to the public,—I take a simple interest in the ordinary kind of families, histories, I believe in simple middle class monotonous tradition, in a way in honest enough business methods.

  Middle-class, middle-class, I know no one of my friends who will admit it, one can find no one among you all to belong to it, I know that here we are to be democratic and aristocratic and not have it, for middle class is sordid material unillusioned unaspiring and always monotonous for it is always there and to be always repeated, and yet I am strong, and I am right, and I know it, and I say it to you and you are to listen to it, yes here in the heart of a people who despise it, that a material middle class who know they are it, with their straightened bond of family to control it, is the one thing always human, vital, and worthy it— worthy that all monotonously shall repeat it,—and from which has always sprung, and all who really look can see it, the very best the world can ever know, and everywhere we always need it.

  The Herslands were a western family. David Hersland as a young man had gone far into the new country to make his money. He had succeeded very well there in making money. He had settled down in Gossols and had lived there for twenty years and more now.

  He had made a big fortune. David Hersland was in some ways a splendid kind of person.

  Mr. Hersland had brought his wife to Gossols with him. He had married her in Bridgepoint when his fortune was just beginning. His children had all been born in Gossols to him. They were really western, all of them, all through them. There were three of them, Martha, Alfred, David, there had been two others but they had died as little children. Now Martha, after many changes, was home again with him. Alfred who had never yet been any trouble to him was gone to Bridgepoint to marry Julia Dehning and then there as a lawyer to win for himself his own way of living. And the youngest David was soon to follow Alfred to Bridgepoint, to go to college there and to decide in him, as his way always had been and no one could ever understand him, from day to day what life meant to him to make it worth his living.

  And so when Alfred Hersland first met Julia Dehning, his family father mother Martha and David were still living there in Gossols. The mother was already now a little ailing, the father had no longer his old strength for living, Martha had come back out of her trouble to them, Alfred had gone away and left them, David was very soon to follow him. They had their old place in Gossols to live in but it had not the beauty and the wonder now it had had all these years for them. Joy was a little dim inside now for all of them.

  For many years it had been full of content, this home they had always lived in. The Herslands had never had a city house to be restless around them and to give restlessness inside to them. They had all these years been in the place they now lived in.

  This house they had always lived in was not in the part of Gossols where the other rich people mostly were living. It was an old place left over from the days when Gossols was just beginning. It was grounds about ten acres large, fenced in with just ordinary kind of rail fencing, it had a not very large wooden house standing on the rising ground in the center with a winding avenue of eucalyptus, blue gum, leading from it to the gateway. There was, just around the house, a pleasant garden, in front were green lawns not very carefully attended and with large trees in the center whose roots always sucked up for themselves almost all the moisture, water in this dry western country could not be used just to keep things green and pretty and so, often, the grass was very dry in summer, but it was very pleasant then lying there watching the birds, black in the bright sunlight and sailing, and the firm white summer clouds breaking away from the horizon and slowly moving. It was very wonderful there in the summer with the dry heat, and the sun burning, and the hot earth for sleeping; and then in the winter with the rain, and the north wind blowing that would bend the trees and often break them, and the owls in the walls scaring you with their tumbling.

  All the rest of the ten acres was for hay and a little vegetable gardening and an orchard with all the kinds of fruit trees that could be got there to do any growing.

  In the summer it was good for generous sweating to help the men make the hay into bails for its preserving and it was well for ones g
rowing to eat radishes pulled with the black earth sticking to them and to chew the mustard and find roots with all kinds of funny flavors in them, and to fill ones hat with fruit and sit on the dry ploughed ground and eat and think and sleep and read and dream and never hear them when they would all be calling; and then when the quail came it was fun to go shooting, and then when the wind and the rain and the ground were ready to help seeds in their growing, it was good fun to help plant them, and the wind would be so strong it would blow the leaves and branches of the trees down around them and you could shout and work and get wet and be all soaking and run out full into the strong wind and let it dry you, in between the gusts of rain that left you soaking. It was fun all the things that happened all the year there then.

  And all around the whole fence that shut these joys in was a hedge of roses, not wild, they had been planted, but now they were very sweet and small and abundant and all the people from that part of Gossols came to pick the leaves to make sweet scented jars and pillows, and always all the Herslands were indignant and they would let loose the dogs to bark and scare them but still the roses grew and always all the people came and took them. And altogether the Herslands always loved it there in their old home in Gossols.

  David Hersland's mother was that good foreign woman who was strong to bear many children and always after was very strong to lead them. The old woman was a great mountain. Her back even in her older age was straight, flat, and firmly supporting. She had it in her to uphold around her, her man, her family, and everybody else whom she saw needing directing. She was a powerful woman and strong to bear many children and always after she would be strong to lead them. She had a few weak ways in her toward some of them, mostly toward one of them who had a bad way of eating too much and being weak and loving, and his mother never could be strong to correct him, no she could not be strong to let his brothers try and save him, and so he died a glutton, but the old mother was dead too by then and she did not have the sorrow of seeing what came to him.