“What?” Harlan asked, pausing to unfurl the umbrella he had left just outside. “What did you say, Nimbus?”
“I mean: What she goin’ do with all that propaty?” Nimbus explained. “Door she goin’ out of when she git ready, it’s a mighty big door, but ’tain’t big enough to tote all that propaty with her—no, suh! I expeck you goin’ git mighty big slice all that propaty, Mist’ Hollun. Goo’ ni’, suh.”
Harlan laughed, bade him good-night, and strode forward into the gusty water that drove through the darkness. Outside the gate, as he turned toward home, he laughed again, amused by the old negro’s view of things, but not amused by the things themselves. Harlan knew that he had never won his grandmother’s affection; her thought had always been of his brother and was still of Dan now, as she lay upon the bed from which she would never rise. Whatever the terms of her new will might be, and whatever their actual consequences, she had made it clear that they were at least designed for Dan’s ultimate benefit.
Harlan had little expectation of any immediate benefit to himself, notwithstanding the lively hints of Nimbus; nor were his hopes greater than his expectations. He had no wish to supplant his brother.
CHAPTER XIII
HE HAD no wish to supplant his brother in Mrs. Savage’s will or in anything;—last of all did he wish to supplant him in the heart of Martha Shelby. Mrs. Savage had been far from understanding her grandson’s deep pride, and, as he strode homeward in the slashing rain, her acrid warnings that he must not hope for anything from Martha repeated themselves over and over in his mind, as such things will, and upon each repetition stung the more.
He thought ruefully of the ancient popular notion that such stingings come from only the unpleasant truth. “It hurts him because it’s true,” people say, sometimes, as if mere insult must ever fail to rankle, and all accusation not well-founded fall but painlessly upon the righteous. What Harlan recognized as possibly nearest the truth among his grandmother’s unfavourable implications was what hurt him the least. He did not wholly lack the power of self-criticism; and he was able to perceive that the old lady had at least a foundation when she said, “Don’t be so superior, young man. That’s always been your trouble.” Harlan was ready to admit that superiority had always been his trouble.
Not definitely, or in so many words, but nevertheless in fact, he believed himself superior to other people—even to all other people. Thus, when he and his brother were children, and their father took them to Mr. Forepaugh’s circus, Dan was enthusiastic about a giant seven and a half feet high; but Harlan remained cold in the lofty presence. True giants were never less than nine feet tall and this one was “a pretty poor specimen,” he declared, becoming so superior in the matter that Dan fell back upon personalities. “Well, anyhow, he’s taller than you are, Harlan.”
“I’m not in the business of being a giant, thank you,” Harlan said; and Dan, helplessly baffled by the retort, because he was unable to analyze it, missed the chance to understand a fundamental part of his brother’s character.
Harlan did not go into the giant business, yet he grew up looking down on all giants, since they all failed to reach the somewhat arbitrary nine feet he had set for them. He could not give credit to a struggling giant of seven feet and a half, and admire him for the difficulties overcome in getting to be at least that tall; Harlan really looked down upon such a giant from a height of nine feet.