THE MAKING OF AMERICANS (Family Saga). Gertrude Stein
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. They loved and admired and respected each other very much this daughter and her father. They understood very well both of them how to please while they were combating with each other. And so each to-morrow they met, and Julia was sturdy and had strong faith in her, and always, her father, a long time each day listened to her.
Hersland could do nothing all this time but wait for Julia to persuade her father. They were both agreed, Hersland and Julia, that any effort on his part to change Mr. Dehning's opinion would only make the fight for Julia so much harder. It was always there that Mr. Dehning did not like young Hersland, and the noblest words and the best acts, never, in any kind of a distrusted person, give any evidence against his condemnation. It is never facts that tell, they are the same when they mean very different things. It is never facts that can make a man feel any thing to be made different to him when he has any kind of a judgment in him. Facts can never tell him anything truly about another man in his opinion. It was always there, Mr. Dehning somehow did not trust this man. And so it was only Julia, who by always repeating, perhaps could find a way to change him.
So Julia struggled every day, to have him, arguing discoursing explaining and appealing. She was always winning but it was slow progress like that in very steep and slippery climbing. For every forward movement of three feet she always slipped back two, sometimes all three and often four and five and six and seven. It was long eager steady fighting but the father was slowly understanding that his daughter wanted this thing enough to stand hard by it and with such a feeling and no real fact against the man, such a father was bound to let her some time get married to him.
"I tell you what Julia what I been thinking. When we all get back to town you can tell better whether you do really want him. I say we better leave off all this talking and just wait till we get home now again. I don't say no Julia and I don't say yes to you. When everybody gets back to town and you are busy and running around with your girls and talking and meeting all the other people and the other kinds of young men, you can tell much better then whether all this business is not all just talking with you. I say now Julia we will wait and just see how you feel about it later. I say we will talk it all over when we get home and you are altogether with all your friends there. I say Julia I don't say no to you and I don't say yes yet to you. I say when we get home we will talk it over again all together and then if nothing turns up new against him, and you still want him, I say if then you still want him enough to trust to him and to trust to your own judgment about him, we will see what we can do about him."
"Alright papa," Julia said to him, "alright I won't even see Alfy any more till we get back to town then, and papa I won't say another word to you about it. I'll just go and ride around the country and think hard the way you like to have me do it about what we both have said about it."
It was a well meant intention this in Julia of riding by herself around the country and thinking hard about what they had both said about it, but not the certain way to end in a passionate young woman her first intense emotion. The wide and glowing meadows of low oaks, the clean clear tingling autumn air, the blaze of color