National Avenue, Booth Tarkington [8 ebook reader .txt] 📗

mother; and year after year passes without altering that air of hers of being only temporarily marooned in what she still calls ‘the West.’ ”

Martha looked serious, but said nothing, and he spoke to the chauffeur, who turned westward at the next cross street. At the end of a block it ceased to be a street and became a newly gravelled road, a transformation that interested Harlan. “Funny!” he said. “I was out this way a couple of months ago and this was a dirt road with a good deal of grass on it. Now he’s had it gravelled. It leads over to the west side of his land, where he laid out the site for his factory, years ago. I thought you might like to see that.”

But before they approached the site of Dan’s factory, they passed a long line of trucks and wagons bound their way; wagon after wagon laden with bricks, and truck loads of lumber, of drainage tile, of steel girders and of cement, and there were great-wheeled carriers of stone. As they came closer they saw that many two-story double houses for workmen and their families were being built on both sides of the road; and, beyond these, long lines of brick walls were rising, broken into regular open oblongs where the ample glass of a modern factory building was to be set.

“By George!” Harlan exclaimed, surprised almost to the point of dismay. “He is going it! Why, he’s got the thing half up!” And he said, “By George!” again, seeing the figure of his brother on a section of roof and outlined against the sky. “There he is⁠—and in his element!”

“You mean in the sky?” Martha asked, her eyes brightening.

“No; I mean hustling. Keeping everybody on the jump while he defaces the landscape some more! That’s his element, isn’t it?”

Dan was indeed in that element and it was truly his. He could be seen waving his arms at the workmen; shouting to foremen; running along the roof and calling to teamsters, instructing them where to dump their loads. His voice was audible to the occupants of the French car that stopped for a few moments in the road; and they became aware that he addressed the workmen, both white and coloured, by their first names or their nicknames exclusively; his shoutings were all to “Jim” or “Mike” or “Shorty” or “Tony” or “Gumbo.”

A moment after the car stopped, a smaller figure climbed up the slope of the low roof and joined the towering and bulky one on the ridge. “He’s got my charming-mannered nephew with him,” Harlan said. “What time he can spare from spoiling the landscape he puts into spoiling Henry!”

“Is that Henry?” Martha asked incredulously; then, as she saw Dan put his right arm about the boy’s shoulder, guarding him carefully from a misstep, she replied to herself. “Yes, it really is. Gracious, how time runs away from us!”

Turning to shout at someone in their direction, Dan saw them, and waved his free arm cordially in greeting; but he made no motion as if to descend, and went on immediately with his shouting to the men. Martha said, “We’ll go now,” to the chauffeur; and the car instantly moved forward.

She leaned back, smiling. “He’s in his glory,” she said. “It all goes on arriving, Harlan. His great days have come!”

XXIV

She was right; the growth was now visibly upon the pleasant and substantial town, where all had once appeared to be so settled and so finished; for, just as with some of man’s disorders that develop slowly, at first merely hinting in mild prophetic symptoms, then becoming more sinister, and attacking one member after another until the whole body writhes and alters, so it is with this disorder that comes racking the midland towns through distortions and turmoil into the vaster likenesses of cities: haphazard and insignificant destructions begin casually, but gradually grow more sweeping and more violent until the victim town becomes aware of great crashings;⁠—and then lies choking in a cloud of dust and smoke wherein huge new excrescences appear.

Cameras of the new age sometimes record upon strips of moving film the slow life of a plant from the seed to the blossoming of its flower; and then there is thrown upon the screen a picture in which time is so quickened that the plant is seen in the very motions of its growth, twisting itself out of the ground and stretching and swelling to its maturity, all within a few minutes. So might a film record be made of the new growth bringing to full life a quiet and elderly midland town; but the picture would be dumbfounding. Cyclone, earthquake, and miracle would seem to stalk hand-in-hand upon the screen; thunder and avalanche should play in the orchestra pit.

In such a picture, block after block of heavy old mansions would be seen to topple; row on row of stout buildings would vanish almost simultaneously; families would be shown in flight, carrying away their goods with them from houses about to crumble; miles of tall trees would be uprooted; the earth would gape, opening in great holes and long chasms;⁠—the very streets would unskin themselves and twist in agony; every landmark would fly dispersed in powder upon the wind, and all old-established things disappear.

Such a picture would be but the truth with time condensed;⁠—that is to say, the truth made like a man’s recollection of events⁠—and yet it would not be like the truth as the truth appeared to Daniel Oliphant and the other men who made the growth, nor like their subsequent memories. For these men saw, not the destruction, but only the city they were building; and they shouted their worship of that vision and were exultant in the uproar. They shouted as each new skyscraper rose swimming through the vast drifts of smoke, and shouted again as the plain, clean, old business streets collapsed and the magnificent and dirty new ones climbed above