THE MAKING OF AMERICANS (Family Saga). Gertrude Stein

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ be a little careful how much you encourage that young Hersland."

      Mr. Dehning, always, in his working, began very far away from a thing he meant later to be firmly attacking. And always in such a far away beginning, he would be looking sharply, out from him, in a sidelong, piercing, deprecating, challenging, fashion, the kind of a way he had always of looking when his wife, who, by her more than equal living, as it often is with a woman, had not in any kind of a way any fear in her of him, could be going to rebuke him. And this way he had of looking, always made him an old man to his children, and mostly there was a fear then in them, only now Julia was strong, other things were bright and glowing, and she could not now feel it in him, the old grown man's sharp outward looking that, closing him, went always so straight into them.

      And so, now, filled full with her new warm imagining, Julia Dehning had not any kind of a fear from him, the kind of a fear a young grown woman has almost always from an old man's looking.

      "Why papa!" she had eagerly quickly demanded of him.

      "I say Julia I don't know anything against him. Yes, I say to you Julia I don't know of anything there is against him. I have looked up all the record there is yet of him and I haven't heard anything against him but Julia, I say, somehow I don't quite like him. His family are alright, I know a man who knows all Gossols, and I asked him, he says yes the family are all successful and well appearing, I say Julia I don't say anything against him only I don't altogether trust him. I know all about his father, everybody has heard of David Hersland, he is the richest man they ever had in Gossols, I know too how he made his own money out there, and everybody says he is alright and he made his own money by his own work; I don't say anything against him, only Julia I think you better be a little careful with him, somehow I don't altogether like him."

      "Isn't that papa because he plays the piano and parts his hair that way in the middle." Julia was eager in her questioning.

      The father laughed, "I guess there is some reason in your question Julia, I don't like that kind of thing much in a man, that's right. It's foolish in a man who wants to make a success making a living, it's foolish to do things that make other men feel they don't want to trust him. It's alright if he was just doing nothing, only I never would want you to tie up with a man who didn't know how to take care of himself to make a living, but Hersland has got ambition, he wants to be a lawyer who makes a big success with his living, I know him, and that don't seem to me the kind of a way to make a good beginning, but may be I am wrong, you young ones always think you know everything. Anyhow Julia I think you better be a little careful with him."

      Mr. Dehning paused, and they walked on a little while and she said nothing.

      Henry Dehning had had a long time to learn how to judge the value in a man, the values in them that in their lives concerned him. The more one looked into the quality of him the more one learned respect for the power he had in him and the more wonder one had in them at the gentleness that almost never left him.

      Mr. Dehning had a massive face made with a firm unagressive chin, loose masses in the cheeks and a strong curved nose, his eyes were blue and always clear, and set between loose pouches underneath and coarse rough overhanging brows. His strong-skulled rounded head was covered with thinning greyish hair. He was a man of medium height, stocky build and sharply squared shoulders, a man quick in his movements, slow in his judgments, and cheerful in his temper; a man to understand and to make use of men, slow to anger and tenacious, without heat or bitterness.

      His children knew the value of his judgments and the generous quality of his understanding, still he was of the old generation, they of the new, with all his wisdom surely he must fail to see the meanings in the unaccustomed.

      "You know Julia," Mr. Dehning went on after a silent interval of walking when they had each been pretty busy with their own thinking, "you know Julia, your mother doesn't like him."

      "Oh! mamma!" Julia broke out, "you know how mamma is, he talks about love and beauty and mamma thinks it ought to be all wedding dresses and a fine house when it isn't money and business. She would be the same about anybody that I would want."

      "Yes Julia, those are your literary notions but a lawyer has got to be a business man now and you like success and money as well as any one. You have always had everything you wanted and you don't want to get along without it. Literary effects and modern improvements are alright for women but with Hersland it ought to be different, it ought to be that he has the kind of sense he needs in his business. I don't say he hasn't got good sense in him to make a success in him and you want to be careful I say Julia, how far you go with him."

      "I know papa just what you mean, and that's alright papa, I know it, but you know yourself papa it isn't everything, now, is it. I know papa how you feel about it, you think we young ones are all wrong the way we look at it, but you say yourself papa how different things are nowadays from the way they used to be when you began with it, and surely papa it can't hurt a man to be interesting even if he wants to make a success in his business."

      Mr. Dehning shook his head but he did not so carry much conviction to his daughter and on this day they said no more about the matter.

      And so Julia began and surely she would win in the struggle. She worked every day and very hard, and slowly she began to bring her father to it. Mrs. Dehning would have to agree if he said she could have it and no one else's opinion in the matter was important.

      Time and again Julia would be sure she had succeeded, for her father always listened to her "yes papa I know it, I know what you mean and it's alright, only you know yourself everything nowadays is very different, you know that yourself papa, you know you always say it," and he liked to hear her say it, and he listened with amusement, and he approved when she knew how to do it, when she brought out with great fervor and with much repeating, great arguments against all his objections. He always openly admired the bright way she had then to make clear to him all her theories and convictions, the new faith in her, the new ideas she had of life and business.

      And then Julia would be sure she had convinced him, for how could a reasonable man ever resist it, she knew she had good reasons in her.

      And each day when their talk was ending and she was saying to him, "you know papa you say yourself now that it's all different, I know what you mean papa, always, I know how you want me to do it, but papa, really, I am not talking without thinking hard about it, you know I listen to you and want to understand it but you know papa, now don't you, that it will be alright and that I am alright just the way you like to have me do it," and then he would have stopped listening to her and his mind would have sort of shut up away from her, and she still held his arm for they had been walking all this time up and down as was their custom every afternoon together, and yet he then himself had quite slipped away from her, and now he would be looking at her with that sharp completed look that, always so full of his own understanding, could not leave it open any way to her to reach inside to him to let in any other kind of a meaning.

      And then he would for that time altogether leave her and the last thing he always would say to her, with the quick movement he had when he felt no more time in him then for her. "Alright, yes, well tomorrow is another day Julia I say to-morrow is another day Julia and you think it all over and we will talk about it further, perhaps to-morrow, I say to-morrow is another day Julia. There is your mother there now Julia, you better go in now to her."

      It was hard for Julia to have such a kind of resistance fighting against her. It was hard for an impatient and eager temper to endure the kind of a way her father always finished off his long talks with her. It was hard for Julia to have to always begin over every time she started to talk about it with her father. But he was very proud of her, she knew very well his feeling for her, she knew very well too how to win him to agree in the end with her. She loved it in a way the struggle he made each day a new one for her. СКАЧАТЬ