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Title: The Romance of a Plain Man
Author: Ellen Glasgow
Release Date: October 20, 2009 [EBook #30299]
Language: English
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THE ROMANCE OF A PLAIN MAN
BY ELLEN GLASGOW
AUTHOR OF "THE DELIVERANCE," "THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE," ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1909
_All rights reserved_
Copyright, 1909,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1909. Reprinted
May, July, August, September, twice, October, 1909.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
I. IN WHICH I APPEAR WITH FEW PRETENSIONS
II. THE ENCHANTED GARDEN
III. A PAIR OF RED SHOES
IV. IN WHICH I PLAY IN THE ENCHANTED GARDEN
V. IN WHICH I START IN LIFE
VI. CONCERNING CARROTS
VII. IN WHICH I MOUNT THE FIRST RUNG OF THE LADDER
VIII. IN WHICH MY EDUCATION BEGINS
IX. I LEARN A LITTLE LATIN AND A GREAT DEAL OF LIFE
X. IN WHICH I GROW UP
XI. IN WHICH I ENTER SOCIETY AND GET A FALL
XII. I WALK INTO THE COUNTRY AND MEET WITH AN ADVENTURE
XIII. IN WHICH I RUN AGAINST TRADITIONS
XIV. IN WHICH I TEST MY STRENGTH
XV. A MEETING IN THE ENCHANTED GARDEN
XVI. IN WHICH SALLY SPEAKS HER MIND
XVII. IN WHICH MY FORTUNES RISE
XVIII. THE PRINCIPLES OF MISS MATOACA
XIX. SHOWS THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE
XX. IN WHICH SOCIETY RECEIVES US
XXI. I AM THE WONDER OF THE HOUR
XXII. THE MAN AND THE CLASS
XXIII. IN WHICH I WALK ON THIN ICE
XXIV. IN WHICH I GO DOWN
XXV. WE FACE THE FACTS AND EACH OTHER
XXVI. THE RED FLAG AT THE GATE
XXVII. WE CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND US
XXVIII. IN WHICH SALLY STOOPS
XXIX. IN WHICH WE RECEIVE VISITORS
XXX. IN WHICH SALLY PLANS
XXXI. THE DEEPEST SHADOW
XXXII. I COME TO THE SURFACE
XXXIII. THE GROWING DISTANCE
XXXIV. THE BLOW THAT CLEARS
XXXV. THE ULTIMATE CHOICE
THE ROMANCE OF A PLAIN MAN
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH I APPEAR WITH FEW PRETENSIONS
As the storm broke and a shower of hail rattled like a handful of
pebbles against our little window, I choked back a sob and edged my
small green-painted stool a trifle nearer the hearth. On the opposite
side of the wire fender, my father kicked off his wet boots, stretched
his feet, in grey yarn stockings, out on the rag carpet in front of the
fire, and reached for his pipe which he had laid, still smoking, on the
floor under his chair.
"It's as true as the Bible, Benjy," he said, "that on the day you were
born yo' brother President traded off my huntin' breeches for a yaller
pup."
My knuckles went to my eyes, while the smart of my mother's slap faded
from the cheek I had turned to the fire.
"What's become o' th' p-p-up-p?" I demanded, as I stared up at him with
my mouth held half open in readiness to break out again.
"Dead," responded my father solemnly, and I wept aloud.
It was an October evening in my childhood, and so vivid has my later
memory of it become that I can still see the sheets of water that rolled
from the lead pipe on our roof, and can still hear the splash! splash!
with which they fell into the gutter below. For three days the clouds
had hung in a grey curtain over the city, and at dawn a high wind,
blowing up from the river, had driven the dead leaves from the
churchyard like flocks of startled swallows into our little street.
Since morning I had watched them across my mother's "prize" red geranium
upon our window-sill--now whipped into deep swirls and eddies over the
sunken brick pavement, now rising in sighing swarms against the closed
doors of the houses, now soaring aloft until they flew almost as high as
the living swallows in the belfry of old Saint John's. Then as the dusk
fell, and the street lamps glimmered like blurred stars through the
rain, I drew back into our little sitting-room, which glowed bright as
an ember against the fierce weather outside.
Half an hour earlier my father had come up from the marble yard, where
he spent his days cutting lambs and doves and elaborate ivy wreaths in
stone, and the smell from his great rubber coat, which hung drying
before the kitchen stove, floated with the aroma of coffee through the
half-open door. When I closed an eye and peeped through the crack, I
could see my mother's tall shadow, shifting, not flitting, on the
whitewashed wall of the kitchen, as she passed back and forth from the
stove to the wooden cradle in which my little sister Jessy lay asleep,
with the head of her rag doll in her mouth.
Outside the splash! splash! of the rain still sounded on the brick
pavement, and as I glanced through the window, I saw an old blind negro
beggar groping under the street lamp at the corner. The muffled beat of
his stick in the drenched leaves passed our doorstep, and I heard it
grow gradually fainter as he turned in the direction of the negro hovels
that bordered our end of the town. Across the street, and on either side
of us, there were rows of small boxlike frame houses built with narrow
doorways, which opened from the sidewalk into funny little kitchens,
where women, in soiled calico dresses, appeared to iron all day long. It
was the poorer quarter of what is known in Richmond as "Church Hill," a
portion of the city which had been left behind in the earlier
fashionable progress westward. Between us and modern Richmond there were
several high hills, up which the poor dripping horses panted on summer
days, a railroad station, and a broad slum-like bottom vaguely described
as the "Old Market." Our prosperity, with our traditions, had crumbled
around us, yet there were still left the ancient church, with its shady
graveyard, and an imposing mansion or two inherited from the forgotten
splendour of former days. The other Richmond--that "up-town" I heard
sometimes mentioned--I had never seen, for my early horizon was bounded
by the green hill, by the crawling salmon-coloured James River at its
foot, and by the quaint white belfry of the parish of old St. John's.
Beneath that belfry I had made miniature graves on summer afternoons,
and as I sat now opposite to my father, with the bright fire between us,
the memory of those crumbling vaults made me hug myself in the warmth,
while I edged nearer the great black kettle singing before the flames.
"Pa," I asked presently, with an effort to resume the conversation along
cheerful lines, "was it a he or a she pup?"
My father turned his bright blue eyes from the fire, while his hand
wandered, with an habitual gesture, to his coarse straw-coloured hair
which stood, like mine, straight up from the forehead.
"Wall, I'll be blessed if I can recollect, Benjy," he replied, and added
after a moment, in which I knew that his slow wits were working over a
fresh attempt at distraction, "but speaking of dawgs, it wouldn't
surprise me if yo' ma was to let you have a b'iled egg for yo' supper."
Again the storm was averted. He was so handsome, so soft, so eager to
make everybody happy, that although he did not deceive even my infant
mind for a minute, I felt obliged by sheer force of sympathy to step
into the amiable snare he laid.
"Hard or soft?" I demanded.
"Now that's a matter of ch'ice, ain't it?" he rejoined, wrinkling his
forehead as if awed by the gravity of the decision; "but bein' a plain
man with a taste for solids, I'd say 'hard' every time."
"Hard, ma," I repeated gravely through the crack of the door to the
shifting shape on the kitchen wall. Then, while he stooped over in the
firelight to prod fresh tobacco into his pipe, I began again my
insatiable quest for knowledge which had brought me punishment at the
hand of my mother an hour before.
"Pa, who named me?"
"Yo' ma."
"Did ma name you, too?"
He shook his head, doubtfully, not negatively. Above his short growth of
beard his cheeks had warmed to a clear pink, and his foolish blue eyes
were as soft as the eyes of a baby.
"Wall, I can't say she did that--exactly."
"Then who did name you?"
"I don't recollect. My ma, I reckon."
"Did ma name me Ben Starr, or just Ben?"
"Just Ben. You were born Starr."
"Was she born Starr, too?"
"Good Lord, no, she was born Savage."
"Then why warn't I born Savage?"
"Because she married me an' I was born Starr."
I gave it up with a sigh. "Who had the most to do with my comin' here,
God or ma?" I asked after a minute.
My father hesitated as if afraid of committing himself to an heretical
utterance. "I ain't so sure," he replied at last, and added immediately
in a louder tone, "Yo' ma, I s'pose."
"Then why don't I say my prayers to ma instead of to God?"
"I wouldn't begin to worry over that at my age, if I were you," replied
my father, with angelic patience, "seein' as it's near supper time an'
the kettle's a-bilin'."
"But I want to know, pa, why it was that I came to be named just Ben?"
"To be named just Ben?" he repeated slowly, as if the fact had been
brought for the first time to his attention. "Wall, I reckon 'twas
because we'd had considerable trouble over the namin' of the first,
which was yo' brother President. That bein' the turn of the man of the
family, I calculated that as a plain American citizen, I couldn't do
better than show I hadn't any ill feelin' agin the Government. I don't
recollect just what the name of the gentleman at the head of the Nation
was, seein' 'twas goin' on sixteen years ago, but I'd made up my mind to
call the infant in the cradle arter him, if he'd ever answered my
letter--which he never did. It was then yo' ma an' I had words because
she didn't want a child of hers named arter such a bad-mannered,
stuck-up, ornary sort, President or no President. She raised a terrible
squall, but I held out against her," he went on, dropping his voice,
"an' I stood up for it that as long as 'twas the office an' not the man
I was complimentin', I'd name him arter the office, which I did on the
spot. When 'twas over an' done the notion got into my head an' kind of
tickled me, an' when you came at last, arter the four others in between,
that died befo' they took breath, I was a'ready to name you 'Governor'
if yo' ma had been agreeable. But 'twas her turn, so she called you
arter her Uncle Benjamin--"
"What's become o' Uncle Benjamin?" I interrupted.
"Dead," responded my father, and for the third time I wept.
"I declar' that child's been goin' on like that for the last hour,"
remarked my mother, appearing upon the threshold. "Thar, thar, Benjy
boy, stop cryin' an' I'll let you go to old Mr. Cudlip's burial
to-morrow."
"May I go, too, ma?" enquired President, who had come in with a lighted
lamp in his hand. He was a big, heavy, overgrown boy, and his head was
already on a level with his father's.
"Not if I know it," responded my mother tartly, for her temper was
rising and she looked tired and anxious. "I'll take Benjy along because
he can crowd in an' nobody'll mind."
She moved a step nearer while her shadow loomed to gigantic proportions
on the whitewashed wall. Her thin brown hair, partially streaked with
grey, was brushed closely over her scalp, and this gave her profile an
angularity that became positively grotesque in the shape behind her.
Across her forehead there were three deep frowning wrinkles, which did
not disappear even when she smiled, and her sad, flint-coloured eyes
held a perplexed and anxious look, as if she were trying always to
remember something which was very important and which she had half
forgotten. I had never seen her, except when she went to funerals,
dressed otherwise than in a faded grey calico with a faded grey shawl
crossed tightly over her bosom and drawn to the back of her waist, where
it was secured by a safety pin of an enormous size. Beside her my father
looked so young and so amiable that I had a confused impression that he
had shrunk to my own age and importance. Then my mother retreated into
the kitchen and he resumed immediately his natural proportions. After
thirty years, when I think now of that ugly little room, with its
painted pine furniture, with its coloured glass vases, filled with dried
cat-tails, upon the mantelpiece, with its crude red and yellow print of
a miniature David attacking a colossal Goliath, with its narrow
window-panes, where beyond the "prize" red geranium the wind drove the
fallen leaves over the brick pavement, with its staring whitewashed
walls, and its hideous rag carpet--when I think of these vulgar details
it is to find that they are softened in my memory by a sense of peace,
of shelter, and of warm firelight shadows.
My mother had just laid the supper table, over which I had watched her
smooth the clean red and white cloth with her twisted fingers; President
was proudly holding aloft a savoury dish of broiled herrings, and my
father had pinned on my bib and drawn back the green-painted chair in
which I sat for my meals--when a hurried knock at the door arrested each
one of us in his separate attitude as if he had been instantly petrified
by the sound.
There was a second's pause, and then before my father could reach it,
the door opened and shut violently, and a woman, in a dripping cloak,
holding a little girl by the hand, came from the storm outside, and ran
straight to the fire, where she stood shaking the child's wet clothes
before the flames. As the light fell over them, I saw that the woman was
young and delicate and richly dressed, with a quantity of pale brown
hair which the rain and wind had beaten flat against her small
frightened face. At the time she was doubtless an unusually pretty
creature to a grown-up pair of eyes, but my gaze, burning with
curiosity, passed quickly over her to rest upon the little girl, who
possessed for me the attraction of my own age and size. She wore red
shoes, I saw at my first glance, and a white cloak, which I took to be
of fur, though it was probably made of some soft, fuzzy cloth I had
never seen. There was a white cap on her head, held by an elastic band
under her square little chin, and about her shoulders her hair lay in a
profuse, drenched mass of brown, which reminded me in the firelight of
the colour of wet November leaves. She was soaked through, and yet as
she stood there, with her teeth chattering in the warmth, I was struck
by the courage, almost the defiance, with which she returned my gaze.
Baby that she was, I felt that she would scorn to cry while my glance
was upon her, though there were fresh tear marks on her flushed cheeks,
and around her solemn grey eyes that were made more luminous by her
broad, heavily arched black eyebrows, which gave her an intense and
questioning look. The memory of this look, which was strange in so young
a child, remained with me after the colour of her hair and every
charming feature in her face were forgotten. Years afterwards I think I
could have recognised her in a crowded street by the mingling of light
with darkness, of intense black with clear grey, in her sparkling
glance.
"I followed the wrong turn," said the pale little woman, breathing hard
with a pitiable, frightened sound, while my mother took her dripping
cloak from her shoulders, "and I could not keep on because of the rain
which came up so heavily. If I could only reach the foot of the hill I
might find a carriage to take me up-town."
My father had sprung forward as she entered, and was vigorously stirring
the fire, which blazed and crackled merrily in the open grate. She
accepted thankfully my mother's efforts to relieve her of her wet wraps,
but the little girl drew back haughtily when she was approached, and
refused obstinately to slip out of her cloak, from which the water ran
in streams to the floor.
"I don't like it here, mamma, it is a common place," she said, in a
clear childish voice, and though I hardly grasped the meaning of her
words, her tone brought to me for the first time a feeling of shame for
my humble surroundings.
"Hush, Sally," replied her mother, "you must dry yourself. These people
are very kind."
"But I thought we were going to grandmama's?"
"Grandmama lives up-town, and we are going as soon as the storm has
blown over. There, be a good girl and let the little boy take your wet
cap."
"I don't want him to take my cap. He is a common boy."
In spite of the fact that she seemed to me to be the most disagreeable
little girl I had ever met, the word she had used was lodged unalterably
in my memory. In that puzzled instant, I think, began my struggle to
rise out of the class in which I belonged by birth; and I remember that
I repeated the word "common" in a whisper to myself, while I resolved
that I would learn its meaning in order that I might cease to be the
unknown thing that it implied.
My mother, who had gone into the kitchen with the dripping cloak in her
arms, returned a moment later with a cup of steaming coffee in one hand
and a mug of hot milk in the other.
"It's a mercy if you haven't caught your death with an inner chill," she
observed in a brisk, kindly tone. "'Twas the way old Mr. Cudlip, whose
funeral I'm going to to-morrow, came to his end, and he was as hale,
red-faced a body as you ever laid eyes on."
The woman received the cup gratefully, and I could see her poor thin
hands tremble as she raised it to her lips.
"Drink the warm milk, dear," she said pleadingly to the disagreeable
little girl, who shook her head and drew back with a stiff childish
gesture.
"I'm not hungry, thank you," she replied to my mother in her sweet,
clear treble. To all further entreaties she returned the same answer,
standing there a haughty, though drenched and battered infant, in her
soiled white cloak and her red shoes, holding her mop of a muff tightly
in both hands.
"I'm not hungry, thank you," she repeated, adding presently in a manner
of chill politeness, "give it to the boy."
But the boy was not hungry either, and when my mother, finally taking
her at her word, turned, in exasperation, and offered the mug to me, I
declined it, also, and stood nervously shifting from one foot to the
other, while my hands caught and twisted the fringe of the table-cloth
at my back. The big grey eyes of the little girl looked straight into
mine, but there was no hint in them that she was aware of my existence.
Though her teeth were chattering, and she knew I heard them, she did not
relax for an instant from her scornful attitude.
"We were just about to take a mouthful of supper, mum, an' we'd be proud
if you an' the little gal would jine us," remarked my father, with an
eager hospitality.
"I thank you," replied the woman in her pretty, grateful manner, "but
the coffee has restored my strength, and if you will direct me to the
hill, I shall be quite able to go on again."
A step passed close to the door on the pavement outside, and I saw her
start and clutch the child to her bosom with trembling hands. As she
stood there in her shaking terror, I remembered a white kitten I had
once seen chased by boys into the area of a deserted house.
"If--if anyone should come to enquire after me, will you be so good as
to say nothing of my having been here?" she asked.
"To be sure I will, with all the pleasure in life," responded my father,
who, it was evident even to me, had become a victim to her distressed
loveliness.
Emboldened by the effusive politeness of my parent, I went up to the
little girl and shyly offered her a blossom from my mother's geranium
upon the window-sill. A scrap of a hand, as cold as ice when it touched
mine, closed over the stem of the flower, and without looking at me, she
stood, very erect, with the scarlet geranium grasped stiffly between her
fingers.
"I'll take you to the bottom of the hill myself," protested my father,
"but I wish you could persuade yourself to try a bite of food befo' you
set out in the rain."
"It is important that I should lose no time," answered the woman,
drawing her breath quickly through her small white teeth, "but I fear
that I am taking you away from your supper?"
"Not at all, you will not deprive me in the least," stammered my father,
blushing up to his ears, while his straight flaxen hair appeared
literally to rise with embarrassment. "I--I--the fact is I'm not an
eater, mum."
For an instant, remembering the story of Ananias I had heard in
Sunday-school, I looked round in terror, half expecting to hear the
dreadful feet of the young men on the pavement. But he passed scathless
for the hour at least, and our visitor had turned to receive her
half-dried cloak from my mother's hands, when her face changed suddenly
to a more deadly pallor, and seizing the little girl by the shoulder,
she fled, like a small frightened animal, across the threshold into the
kitchen.
My father's hand had barely reached the knob of the street door, when it
opened and a man in a rubber coat entered, and stopped short in the
centre of the room, where he stood blinking rapidly in the lamplight. I
heard the rain drip with a soft pattering sound from his coat to the
floor, and when he wheeled about, after an instant in which his glance
searched the room, I saw that his face was flushed and his eyes swimming
and bloodshot. There was in his look, as I remember it now, something of
the inflamed yet bridled cruelty of a bird of prey.
"Have you noticed a lady with a little girl go by?" he enquired.
At his question my father fell back a step or two until he stood
squarely planted before the door into the kitchen. Though he was a big
man, he was not so big as the other, who towered above the dried
cat-tails in a china vase on the mantelpiece.
"Are you sure they did not pass here?" asked the stranger, and as he
turned his head the dried pollen was loosened from the cat-tails and
drifted in an ashen dust to the hearth.
"No, I'll stake my word on that. They ain't passed here yet," replied my
father.
With an angry gesture the other shook his rubber coat over our bright
little carpet, and passed out again, slamming the door violently behind
him. Running to the window, I lifted the green shade, and watched his
big black figure splashing recklessly through the heavy puddles under
the faint yellowish glimmer of the street lamp at the comer. The light
flickered feebly on his rubber coat and appeared to go out in the
streams of water that fell from his shoulders.
When I looked round I saw that the woman had come back into the room,
still grasping the little girl by the hand.
"No, no, I must go at once. It is necessary that I should go at once,"
she repeated breathlessly, looking up in a dazed way into my mother's
face.
"If you must you must, an' what ain't my business ain't," replied my
mother a trifle sharply, while she wrapped a grey woollen comforter of
her own closely over the head and shoulders of the little girl, "but if
you'd take my advice, which you won't, you'd turn this minute an' walk
straight back home to yo' husband."
But the woman only shook her head with its drenched mass of soft brown
hair.
"We must go, Sally, mustn't we?" she said to the child.
"Yes, we must go, mamma," answered the little girl, still grasping the
stem of the red geranium between her fingers.
"That bein' the case, I'll get into my coat with all the pleasure in
life an' see you safe," remarked my father, with a manner that impressed
me as little short of the magnificent.
"But I hate to take you away from home on such a terrible night."
"Oh, don't mention the weather," responded my gallant parent, while he
struggled into his rubber shoes; and he added quite handsomely, after a
flourish which appeared to set the elements at defiance, "arter all,
weather is only weather, mum."
As nobody, not even my mother, was found to challenge the truth of this
statement, the child was warmly wrapped up in an old blanket shawl, and
my father lifted her in his arms, while the three set out under a big
cotton umbrella for the brow of the hill. President and I peered after
them from the window, screening our eyes with our hollowed palms, and
flattening our noses against the icy panes; but in spite of our efforts
we could only discern dimly the shape of the umbrella rising like a
miniature black mountain out of the white blur of the fog. The long
empty street with the wind-drifts of dead leaves, the pale glimmer of
the solitary light at the far corner, the steady splash! splash! of the
rain as it fell on the brick pavement, the bitter draught that blew in
over the shivering geranium upon the sill--all these brought a lump to
my throat, and I turned back quickly into our cheerful little room,
where my untasted supper awaited me.
CHAPTER II
THE ENCHANTED GARDEN
The funeral was not until nine o'clock, but at seven my mother served us
a cold breakfast in order, as she said, that she might get the dishes
washed and the house tidied before we started. Gathering about the bare
table, we ate our dismal meal in a depressed silence, while she bustled
back and forth from the kitchen in her holiday attire, which consisted
of a stiff black bombazine dress and the long rustling crape veil she
had first put on at the death of her uncle Benjamin, some twenty years
before. As her only outings were those occasioned by the deaths of her
neighbours, I suppose her costume was quite as appropriate as it seemed
to my childish eyes. Certainly, as she appeared before me in her hard,
shiny, very full bombazine skirt and attenuated bodice, I regarded her
with a reverence which her everyday calico had never inspired.
"I ain't et a mouthful an' I doubt if I'll have time to befo' we start,"
she was saying in an irritable voice, as I settled into my bib and my
chair. "Anybody might have thought I'd be allowed to attend a funeral in
peace, but I shan't be,--no, not even when it comes to my own."
"Thar's plenty of time yet, Susan," returned my father cheerfully, while
he sawed at the cold cornbread on the table. "You've got a good hour an'
mo' befo' you."
"An' the things to wash up an' the house to tidy in my veil and bonnet.
Thar ain't many women, I reckon, that would wash up china in a crape
veil, but I've done it befo' an' I'm used to it."
"Why don't you lay off yo' black things till you're through?"
His suggestion was made innocently enough, but it appeared, as he
uttered it, to be the one thing needed to sharpen the edge of my
mother's temper. The three frowning lines deepened across her forehead,
and she stared straight before her with her perplexed and anxious look
under her rustling crape.
"Yes, I'll take 'em off an' lay 'em away an' git back to work," she
rejoined. "It did seem as if I might have taken a holiday at a time like
this--my next do' neighbour, too, an' I'd al'ays promised him I'd see
him laid safe in the earth. But, no, I can't do it. I'll go take off my
veil an' bonnet an' stay at home."
Before this attack my father grew so depressed that I half expected to
see tears fall into his cup of coffee, as they had into mine. His
handsome gayety dropped from him, and he looked as downcast as was
possible for a face composed of so many flagrantly cheerful features.
"I declar, Susan, I wa'nt thinkin' of that," he returned apologetically,
"it just seemed to me that you'd be mo' comfortable without that sheet
of crape floatin' down yo' back."
"I've never been comfortable in my life," retorted my mother, "an' I
don't expect to begin when I dress myself to go to a funeral. It's got
to be, I reckon, an' it's what I'm used to; but if thar's a man alive
that would stand over a stove with a crape veil on his head, I'd be
obliged to him if he'd step up an' show his face."
At this point; the half-grown girl who had promised to look after the
baby arrived, and with her assistance, my mother set about putting the
house in order, while my father, as soon as his luncheon basket was
packed, wished us a pleasant drive, and started for old Timothy Ball's
marble yard, where he worked. At the sink in the kitchen my mother, with
her crape veil pinned back, and her bombazine sleeves rolled up, stood
with her arms deep in soapsuds.
"Ma," I asked, going up to her and turning my back while she unfastened
my bib with one soapy hand, "did you ever hear anybody call you common?"
"Call me what?"
"Common. What does it mean when anybody calls you common?"
"It means generally that anybody is a fool."
"Then am I, ma?"
"Air you what?"
"Am I common?"
"For the Lord's sake, Benjy, stop yo' pesterin'. What on earth has gone
an' set that idee workin' inside yo' head?"
"Is pa common?"
She meditated an instant. "Wall, he wa'nt born a Savage, but I'd never
have called him common--exactly," she answered.
"Then perhaps you are?"
"You talk like a fool! Haven't I told you that I wa'nt?" she snapped.
"Then if you ain't an' pa ain't exactly, how can I be?" I concluded with
triumph.
"Whoever said you were? Show me the person."
"It wa'nt a person. It was a little girl."
"A little girl? You mean the half-drowned brat I wrapped up in yo'
grandma's old blanket shawl I set the muffin dough under? To think of my
sendin' yo' po' tired pa splashin' out with 'em into the rain. So she
called you common?"
But the sound of a carriage turning the corner fell on my ears, and
running hastily into the sitting-room, I opened the door and looked out
eagerly for signs of the approaching funeral.
A bright morning had followed the storm, and the burnished leaves, so
restless the day before, lay now wet and still under the sunshine. I had
stepped joyously over the threshold, to the sunken brick pavement, when
my mother, moved by a sudden anxiety for my health, called me back, and
in spite of my protestations, wrapped me in a grey blanket shawl, which
she fastened at my throat with the enormous safety-pin she had taken
from her own waist. Much embarrassed by this garment, which dragged
after me as I walked, I followed her sullenly out of the house and as
far as our neighbour's doorstep, where I was ordered to sit down and
wait until the service was over. As the stir of her crape passed into
the little hall, I seated myself obediently on the single step which led
straight from the street, and made faces, during the long wait, at the
merry driver of the hearse--a decrepit negro of ancient days, who
grinned provokingly at the figure I cut in my blanket shawl.
"Hi! honey, is you got on swaddlin' close er a windin' sheet?" he
enquired. "I'se a-gittin' near bline en I cyarn mek out."
"You jest wait till I'm bigger an' I'll show you," was my peaceable
rejoinder.
"Wat's dat you gwine sho' me, boy? I reckon I'se done seed mo' curus
things den you in my lifetime."
I looked up defiantly. Between the aristocratic, if fallen, negro and
myself there was all the instinctive antagonism that existed in the
Virginia of that period between the "quality" and the "poor white
trash."
"If you don't lemme alone you'll see mo'n you wanter."
"Whew! I reckon you gwine tu'n out sump'im' moughty outlandish, boy.
I'se a-lookin' wid all my eyes an I cyarn see nuttin' at all."
"Wait till I'm bigger an' you'll see it," I answered.
"I'se sho'ly gwine ter wait, caze ef'n hits mo' curus den you is en dat
ar windin' sheet, hit's a sight dat I'se erbleeged ter lay eyes on.
Wat's yo' name, suh?" he enquired, with a mocking salute.
"I am Ben Starr," I replied promptly, "an' if you wait till I get
bigger, I'll bus' you open."
"Hi! hi! wat you wanter bus' me open fur, boy? Is you got a pa?"
"He's Thomas Starr, an' he cuts lambs and doves on tombstones. I've seen
'em, an' I'm goin' to learn to cut 'em, too, when I grow up. I like
lambs."
The door behind me opened suddenly without warning, and as I scrambled
from the doorstep, my enemy, the merry driver, backed his creaking
vehicle to the sidewalk across which the slow procession of mourners
filed. A minute later I was caught up by my mother's hand, and borne
into a carriage, where I sat tightly wedged between two sombre females.
"So you've brought yo' little boy along, Mrs. Starr," remarked a third
from the opposite seat, in an aggressive voice.
"Yes, he had a cold an' I thought the air might do him good," replied my
mother with her society manner.
"Wall, I've nine an' not one of 'em has ever been to a funeral,"
returned the questioner. "I've al'ays been set dead against 'em for
children, ain't you, Mrs. Boxley?"
Mrs. Boxley, a placid elderly woman, who had already begun to doze in
her corner, opened her eyes and smiled on me in a pleasant and friendly
way.
"To tell the truth I ain't never been able really to enjoy a child's
funeral," she replied.
"I'm sure we're all mighty glad to have him along, Mrs. Starr," observed
the fourth woman, who was soft and peaceable and very fat. "He's a fine,
strong boy now, ain't he, ma'am?"
"Middlin' strong. I hope he ain't crowdin' you. Edge closer to me,
Benjy."
I edged closer until her harsh bombazine sleeve seemed to scratch the
skin from my cheek. Mrs. Boxley had dozed again, and sinking lower on
the seat, I had just prepared myself to follow her example, when a
change in the conversation brought my wandering wits instantly together,
and I sat bolt upright while my eyes remained fixed on the small,
straggling houses we were passing.
"Yes, she would go, rain or no rain," my mother was saying, and I knew
that in that second's snatch of sleep she had related the story of our
last evening's adventure. "To be sure she may have been all she ought to
be, but I must say I can't help mistrustin' that little, palaverin' kind
of a woman with eyes like a scared rabbit."
"If it was Sarah Mickleborough, an' I think it was, she had reason
enough to look scared, po' thing," observed Mrs. Kidd, the soft fat
woman, who sat on my left side. "They've only lived over here in the old
Adams house for three months, but the neighbours say he's almost killed
her twice since they moved in. She came of mighty set up, high falutin'
folks, you know, an' when they wouldn't hear of the marriage, she ran
off with him one night about ten years ago just after he came home out
of the army. He looked fine, they say, in uniform, on his big black
horse, but after the war ended he took to drink and then from drink, as
is natchel, he took to beatin' her. It's strange--ain't it?--how easily
a man's hand turns against a woman once he's gone out of his head?"
"Ah, I could see that she was the sort that's obliged to be beaten
sooner or later if thar was anybody handy around to do it," remarked my
mother. "Some women are made so that they're never happy except when
they're hurt, an' she's one of 'em. Why, they can't so much as look at a
man without invitin' him to ill-treat 'em."
"Thar ain't many women that know how to deal with a husband as well as
you an' Mrs. Cudlip," remarked Mrs. Kidd, with delicate flattery.
"Po' Mrs. Cudlip. I hope she is bearin' up," sighed my mother. "'Twas
the leg he lost at Seven Pines--wasn't it?--that supported her?"
"That an' the cheers he bottomed. The last work he did, po' man, was for
Mrs. Mickleborough of whom we were speakin'. I used to hear of her befo'
the war when she was pretty Miss Sarah Bland, in a white poke bonnet
with pink roses."
"An' now never a day, passes, they say, that Harry Mickleborough doesn't
threaten to turn her an' the child out into the street."
"Are her folks still livin'? Why doesn't she go back to them?"
"Her father died six months after the marriage, an' the rest of 'em live
up-town somewhar. The only thing that's stuck to her is her coloured
mammy, Aunt Euphronasia, an' they tell me that that old woman has mo'
influence over Harry Mickleborough than anybody livin'. When he gets
drunk an' goes into one of his tantrums she walks right up to him an'
humours him like a child."
As we drove on their voices grew gradually muffled and thin in my ears,
and after a minute, in which I clung desperately to my eluding
consciousness, my head dropped with a soft thud upon Mrs. Kidd's
inviting bosom. The next instant I was jerked violently erect by my
mother and ordered sternly to "keep my place an' not to make myself a
nuisance by spreadin' about." With this admonition in my ears, I pinched
my leg and sat staring with heavy eyes out upon the quiet street, where
the rolling of the slow wheels over the fallen leaves was the only sound
that disturbed the silence. After ten bitter years the city was still
bound by the terrible lethargy which had immediately succeeded the war;
and on Church Hill it seemed almost as if we had been forgotten like the
breastworks and the battle-fields in the march of progress. The grip of
poverty, which was fiercer than the grip of armies, still held us, and
the few stately houses showed tenantless and abandoned in the midst of
their ruined gardens. Sometimes I saw an old negress in a coloured
turban come out upon one of the long porches and stare after us, her
pipe in her mouth and her hollowed palm screening her eyes; and once a
noisy group of young mulattoes emerged from an alley and followed us
curiously for a few blocks along the sidewalk.
Withdrawing my gaze from the window, I looked enviously at Mrs. Boxley,
who snored gently in her corner. Then for the second time sleep
overpowered me, and in spite of my struggles, I sank again on Mrs.
Kidd's bosom.
"Thar, now, don't think of disturbin' him, Mrs. Starr. He ain't the
least bit in my way. I can look right over his head," I heard murmured
over me as I slid blissfully into unconsciousness.
What happened after this I was never able to remember, for when I came
clearly awake again, we had reached our door, and my mother was shaking
me in the effort to make me stand on my feet.
"He's gone and slept through the whole thing," she remarked irritably to
President, while I stumbled after them across the pavement, with the
fringed ends of my blanket shawl rustling the leaves.
"He's too little. You might have let me go, ma," replied President, as
he dragged me, sleepy eyes, ruffled flaxen hair, and trailing shawl over
the doorstep.
"An' you're too big," retorted my mother, removing the long black pins
from her veil, and holding them in her mouth while she carefully
smoothed and folded the lengths of crape. "You could never have squeezed
in between us, an' as it was Mrs. Kidd almost overlaid Benjy. But you
didn't miss much," she hastened to assure him, "I declar' I thought at
one time we'd never get on it all went so slowly."
Having placed her bonnet and veil in the tall white bandbox upon the
table, she hurried off to prepare our dinner, while President urged me
in an undertone to "sham sick" that afternoon so that he wouldn't have
to take me out for an airing on the hill.
"But I want to go," I responded selfishly, wide awake at the prospect.
"I want to see the old Adams house where the little girl lives."
"If you go I can't play checkers, an' it's downright mean. What do you
care about little girls? They ain't any good."
"But this little girl has got a drunken father."
"Well, you won't see _him_ anyway, so what is the use?"
"She lives in a big house an' it's got a big garden--as big as that!" I
stretched out my arms in a vain attempt to impress his imagination, but
he merely looked scornful and swore a mighty vow that he'd "be jiggered
if he'd keep on playin' nurse-girl to a muff."
At the time he put my pleading sternly aside, but a couple of hours
later, when the afternoon was already waning, he relented sufficiently
to take me out on the ragged hill, which was covered thickly with
pokeberry, yarrow, and stunted sumach. Before our feet the ground sank
gradually to the sparkling river, and farther away I could see the
silhouette of an anchored vessel etched boldly against the rosy clouds
of the sunset.
As I stood there, holding fast to his hand, in the high wind that blew
up from the river, a stout gentleman, leaning heavily on a black
walking-stick, with a big gold knob at the top, came panting up the
slope and paused beside us, with his eyes on the western sky. He was
hale, handsome, and ruddy-faced, with a bunch of iron-grey whiskers on
either cheek, and a vivacious and merry eye which seemed to catch at a
twinkle whenever it met mine. His rounded stomach was spanned by a
massive gold watch-chain, from which dangled a bunch of seals that
delighted my childish gaze.
"It's a fine view," he observed pleasantly, patting my shoulder as if I
were in some way responsible for the river, the anchored vessel, and the
rosy sunset. "I moved up-town as soon as the war ended, but I still
manage to crawl back once in a while to watch the afterglow."
"Where does the sun go," I asked, "when it slips way down there on the
other side of the river?"
The gentleman smiled benignly, and I saw from his merry glance that he
did not share my mother's hostility to the enquiring mind.
"Well, I shouldn't be surprised if it went to the wrong side of the
world for little boys and girls over there to get up by," he replied.
"May I go there, too, when I'm big?"
"To the wrong side of the world? You may, who knows?"
"Have you ever been there? What is it like?"
"Not yet, not yet, but there's no telling. I've been across the ocean,
though, and that's pretty far. I went once in a ship that ran through
the blockade and brought in a cargo of Bibles."
"What did you want with so many Bibles? We've got one. It has gilt
clasps."
"Want with the Bibles! Why, every one of these Bibles, my boy, may have
saved a soul."
"Has our Bible saved a soul? An' whose soul was it? It stays on our
centre table, an' my name's in it. I've seen it."
"Indeed! and what may your name be?"
"Ben Starr. That's my name. What is yours? Is yo' name in the Bible?
Does everybody's name have to be in the Bible if they're to be saved?
Who put them in there? Was it God or the angels? If I blot my name out
can I still go to heaven? An' if yours isn't in there will you have to
be damned? Have you ever been damned an' what does it feel like?"
"Shut up, Benjy, or ma'll wallop you," growled President, squeezing my
hand so hard that I cried aloud.
"Ah, he's a fine boy, a promising boy, a remarkable boy," observed the
gentleman, with one finger in his waistcoat pocket. "Wouldn't you like
to grow up and be President, my enquiring young friend?"
"No, sir, I'd rather be God," I replied, shaking my head.
All the gentleman's merry grey eyes seemed to run to sparkles.
"Ah, there's nothing, after all, like the true American spirit," he
said, patting my shoulder. Then he laughed so heartily that his
gold-rimmed eye-glasses fell from his eyes and dangled in the air at the
end of a silk cord. "I'm afraid your aspiration is too lofty for my
help," he said, "but if you should happen to grow less ambitious as you
grow older, then remember, please, that my name is General Bolingbroke."
"Why, you're the president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic
Railroad, sir!" exclaimed President, admiring and embarrassed.
The General sighed, though even I could see that this simple tribute to
his fame had not left him unmoved. "Ten years ago I was the man who
tried to save Johnston's army, and to-day I am only a railroad
president," he answered, half to himself; "times change and fames change
almost as quickly. When all is said, however, there may be more lasting
honour in building a country's trade than in winning a battle. I'll have
a tombstone some day and I want written on it, 'He brought help to the
sick land and made the cotton flower to bloom anew.' My name is General
Bolingbroke," he added, with his genial and charming smile. "You will
not forget it?"
I assured him that I should not, and that if it could be done, I'd try
to have it written in our Bible with gilt clasps, at which he thanked me
gravely as he shook my hand.
"An' I think now I'd rather be president of the Great South Midland and
Atlantic Railroad, sir," I concluded.
"Young man, I fear you're with the wind," he said, laughing, and added,
"I've a nephew just about your age and at least a head shorter, what do
you think of that?"
"Has he a kite?" I enquired eagerly. "I have, an' a top an' ten checkers
an' a big balloon."
"Have you, indeed? Well, my poor boy is not so well off, I regret to
say. But don't you think your prosperity is excessive considering the
impoverished condition of the country?"
The big words left me gasping, and fearing that I had been too boastful
for politeness, I hastened to inform him that "although the balloon was
very big, it was also bu'sted, which made a difference."
"Ah, it is, is it? Well, that does make a difference."
"If your boy hasn't any checkers I'll give him half of mine," I added
with a gulp.
With an elaborate flourish the General drew out a stiffly starched
pocket handkerchief and blew his nose. "That's a handsome offer and I'll
repeat it without fail," he said.
Then he shook hands again and marched down the hill with his gold-headed
stick tapping the ground.
"Now you'll come and trot home, I reckon," said President, when he had
disappeared.
But the spirit of revolt had lifted its head within me, for through a
cleft in the future, I saw myself already as the president of the Great
South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, with a jingling bunch of seals and
a gold-headed stick.
"I ain't goin' that way," I said, "I'm goin' home by the old Adams house
where the little girl lives."
"No, you ain't either. I'll tell ma on you."
"I don't care. If you don't take me home by the old Adams house, you'll
have to carry me every step of the way, an' I'll make myself heavy."
For a long minute President wrinkled his brows and thought hard in
silence. Then an idea appeared to penetrate his slow mind, and he
grasped me by the shoulder and shook me until I begged him to stop.
"If I take you home that way will you promise to sham sick to-morrow, so
I shan't have to bring you out?"
The price was high, but swallowing my disappointment I met it squarely.
"I will if you'll lift me an' let me look over the wall."
"Hope you may die?"
"Hope I may die."
"Wall, it ain't anything to see but jest a house," remarked President,
as I held out my hand, "an' girls ain't worth the lookin' at."
"She called me common," I said, soberly.
"Oh, shucks!" retorted President, with fine scorn, and we said no more.
Clinging tightly to his hand I trudged the short blocks in silence. As I
was little, and he was very large for his years, it was with difficulty
that I kept pace with him; but by taking two quick steps to his single
slow one, I managed to cover the same distance in almost the same number
of minutes. He was a tall, overgrown boy, very fat for his age, with a
foolish, large-featured face which continued to look sheepishly amiable
even when he got into a temper.
"Is it far, President?" I enquired at last between panting breaths.
"There 'tis," he answered, pointing with his free hand to a fine old
mansion, with a broad and hospitable front, from which the curved iron
railing bent in a bright bow to the pavement. It was the one great house
on the hill, with its spreading wings, its stuccoed offices, its massive
white columns at the rear, which presided solemnly over the terraced
hill-side. A moment later he led me up to the high, spiked wall, and
swung me from the ground to a secure perch on his shoulder. With my
hands clinging to the iron nails that studded the wall, I looked over,
and then caught my breath sharply at the thought that I was gazing upon
an enchanted garden. Through the interlacing elm boughs the rosy light
of the afterglow fell on the magnolias and laburnums, on the rose
squares, and on the tall latticed arbours, where amid a glossy bower of
foliage, a few pale microphylla roses bloomed out of season. Overhead
the wind stirred, and one by one the small yellow leaves drifted, like
wounded butterflies, down on the box hedges and the terraced walks.
"You've got to come down now--you're too heavy," said President from
below, breathing hard as he held me up.
"Jest a minute--give me a minute longer an' I'll let you eat my
blackberry jam at supper."
"An' you've promised on yo' life to sham sick to-morrow?"
"I'll sham sick an' I'll let you eat my jam, too, if you'll hold me a
little longer."
He lifted me still higher, and clutching desperately to the iron spikes,
I hung there quivering, breathless, with a thumping heart. A glimmer of
white flitted between the box rows on a lower terrace, and I saw that
the princess of the enchanted garden was none other than my little girl
of the evening before. She was playing quietly by herself in a bower of
box, building small houses of moss and stones, which she erected with
infinite patience. So engrossed was she in her play that she seemed
perfectly oblivious of the fading light and of the birds and squirrels
that ran past her to their homes in the latticed arbours. Higher and
higher rose her houses of moss and stones, while she knelt there,
patient and silent, in the terrace walk with the small, yellow leaves
falling around her.
"That's a square deal now," said President, dropping me suddenly to
earth. "You'd better come along and trot home or you'll get a lamming."
My enchanted garden had vanished, the spiked wall rose over my head, and
before me, as I turned homeward, spread all the familiar commonplaceness
of Church Hill.
"How long will it be befo' I can climb up by myself?" I asked.
"When you grow up. You're nothin' but a kid."
"An' when'll I grow up if I keep on fast?"
"Oh, in ten or fifteen years, I reckon."
"Shan't I be big enough to climb up befo' then?"
"Look here, you shut up! I'm tired answerin' questions," shouted my
elder brother, and grasping his hand I trotted in a depressed silence
back to our little home.
CHAPTER III
A PAIR OF RED SHOES
I awoke the next morning a changed creature from the one who had fallen
asleep in my trundle-bed. In a single hour I had awakened to the sharp
sense of contrast, to the knowledge that all ways of life were not
confined to the sordid circle in which I lived. Outside the poverty, the
ugliness, the narrow streets, rose the spiked wall of the enchanted
garden; and when I shut my eyes tight, I could see still the half-bared
elms arching against the sunset, and the old house beyond, with its
stuccoed wings and its grave white columns, which looked down on the
magnolias and laburnums just emerging from the twilight on the lower
terrace. In the midst of this garden I saw always the little girl
patiently building her houses of moss and stones, and it seemed to me
that I could hardly live through the days until I grew strong enough to
leap the barriers and play beside her in the bower of box.
"Ma," I asked, measuring myself against the red and white cloth on the
table, "does it look to you as if I were growin' up?"
The air was strong with the odour of frying bacon, and when my mother
turned to answer me, she held a smoking skillet extended like a votive
offering in her right hand. She was busy preparing breakfast for Mrs.
Cudlip, whose husband's funeral we had attended the day before, and as
usual when any charitable mission was under way, her manner to my father
and myself had taken a biting edge.
"Don't talk foolishness, Benjy," she replied, stopping to push back a
loosened wiry lock of hair; "it's time to think about growin' up when
you ain't been but two years in breeches. Here, if you're through
breakfast, I want you to step with this plate of muffins to Mrs. Cudlip.
Tell her I sent 'em an' that I hope she is bearin' up."
"That you sent 'em an' that you hope she is bearin' up," I repeated.
"That's it now. Don't forget what I told you befo' you're there. Thomas,
have you buttered that batch of muffins?"
My father handed me the plate, which was neatly covered with a
red-bordered napkin.
"Did you tell me to lay a slice of middlin' along side of 'em, Susan?"
he humbly enquired.
Without replying to him in words, my mother seized the plate from me,
and lifting the napkin, removed the offending piece of bacon, which she
replaced in the dish.
"I thought even you, Thomas, would have had mo' feelin' than to send
middlin' to a widow the day arter she has buried her husband--even a
one-legged one! Middlin' indeed! One egg an' that soft boiled, will be
as near a solid as she'll touch for a week. Keep along, Benjy, an' be
sure to say just what I told you."
I did my errand quickly, and returning, asked eagerly if I might go out
all by myself an' play for an hour. "I'll stay close in the churchyard
if you'll lemme go," I entreated.
"Run along then for a little while, but if you go out of the churchyard,
you'll get a whippin'," replied my mother.
With this threat ringing like a bell in my ears, I left the house and
walked quickly along the narrow pavement to where, across the wide
street, I discerned the white tower and belfry which had been added by a
later century to the parish church of Saint John. Overhead there was a
bright blue sky, and the October sunshine, filtering through the bronzed
network of sycamore and poplar, steeped the flat tombstones and the
crumbling brick vaults in a clear golden light. The church stood upon a
moderate elevation above the street, and I entered it now by a short
flight of steps, which led to a grassy walk that did not end at the
closed door, but continued to the brow of the hill, where a few
scattered slabs stood erect as sentinels over the river banks. For a
moment I stood among them, watching the blue haze of the opposite shore;
then turning away I rolled over on my back and lay at full length in the
periwinkle that covered the ground. From beyond the church I could hear
Uncle Methusalah, the negro caretaker, raking the dead leaves from the
graves, and here and there among the dark boles of the trees there
appeared presently thin bluish spirals of smoke. The old negro's figure
was still hidden, but as his rake stirred the smouldering piles, I could
smell the sharp sweet odour of the burning leaves. Sometimes a wren or a
sparrow fluttered in and out of the periwinkle, and once a small green
lizard glided like the shadow of a moving leaf over a tombstone. One
sleeper among them I came to regard, as I grew somewhat older, almost
with affection--not only because he was young and a soldier, but because
the tall marble slab implored me to "tread lightly upon his ashes." Not
once during the many hours when I played in the churchyard, did I forget
myself and run over the sunken grave where he lay.
The sound of the moving rake passed the church door and drew nearer, and
the grey head of Uncle Methusalah appeared suddenly from behind an ivied
tree trunk. Sitting up in the periwinkle, I watched him heap the
coloured leaves around me into a brilliant pile, and then bending over
hold a small flame close to the curling ends. The leaves, still moist
from the rain, caught slowly, and smouldered in a scented cloud under
the trees.
"Dis yer trash ain' gwine ter bu'n twel hit's smoked out," he remarked
in a querulous voice.
"Uncle Methusalah," I asked, springing up, "how old are you?"
With a leisurely movement, he dragged his rake over the walk, and then
bringing it to rest at his feet, leaned his clasped hands on the end of
it, and looked at me over the burning leaves. He wore an old, tightly
fitting army coat of Union blue, bearing tarnished gold epaulets upon
the shoulders, and around his throat a red bandanna handkerchief was
wrapped closely to keep out the "chills."
"Gaud-a-moughty, honey!" he replied, "I'se so ole dat I'se done clean
furgit ter count."
"I reckon you knew almost everybody that's buried here, didn't you?"
"Mos' un um, chile, but I ain't knowed near ez many ez my ole Marster.
He done shuck hans w'en he wuz live wid um great en small. I'se done
hyern 'im tell in my time how he shuck de han' er ole Marse Henry right
over dar in dat ar church."
"Who was ole Marse Henry?" I enquired.
"I dunno, honey, caze he died afo' my day, but he mus' hev done a
powerful heap er talkin' while he wuz 'live."
"Whom did he talk to, Uncle Methusalah?"
"Ter hisself mostly, I reckon, caze you know folks ain' got time al'ays
ter be lisen'in'. But hit wuz en dish yer church dat he stood up en ax
'em please ter gin 'im liberty er ter gin 'im deaf."
"An' which did they give him, Uncle?"
"Wall, honey, ez fur ez I recollect de story dey gun 'im bofe."
Bending over in his old blue army coat with the tarnished epaulets, he
prodded the pile of leaves, where the scented smoke hung low in a cloud.
The wind stirred softly in the grass, and a small flame ran along a bent
twig of maple to a single scarlet leaf at the end.
"Did they give 'em to him because he talked too much?" I asked.
"I ain' never hyern ner better reason, chile. Folks cyarn' stan' too
much er de gab nohow, en' dey sez dat he 'ouldn't let up, but kep' up
sech a racket dat dey couldn't git ner sleep. Den at las' ole King
George over dar in England sent de hull army clear across de water jes'
ter shet his mouf."
"An' did he shut it?"
"Dat's all er hit dat I ever hyern tell, boy, but ef'n you don' quit
axin' folks questions day in en day out, he'll send all de way over yer
agin' jes' ter shet yourn."
He went off, gathering the leaves into another pile at a little
distance, and after a moment I followed him and stood with my back
against a high brick vault.
"Is there any way, Uncle Methusalah, that you can grow up befo' yo'
time?" I asked.
"Dar 'tis agin!" exclaimed the old negro, but he added kindly enough,
"Dey tell me you kin do hit by stretchin', chile, but I ain' never seed
hit wid my eyes, en w'at I ain' seed wid my eyes I ain' set much sto'
by."
His scepticism, however, honest as it was, did not prevent my seizing
upon the faint hope he offered, and I had just begun to stretch myself
violently against the vault, when a voice speaking at my back brought my
heels suddenly to the safe earth again.
"Boy," said the voice, "do you want a dog?"
Turning quickly I found myself face to face with the princess of the
enchanted garden. She wore a fresh white coat and a furry white cap and
a pair of red shoes that danced up and down. In her hand she carried a
dirty twine string, the other end of which was tied about the neck of a
miserable grey and white mongrel puppy.
"Do you want a dog, boy?" she repeated, as proudly as if she offered a
canine prize.
The puppy was ugly, ill-bred, and dirty, but not an instant did I
hesitate in the response I made.
"Yes, I want a dog," I answered as gravely as she had spoken.
She held out the string and my fist closed tightly over it. "I found him
in the gutter," she explained, "and I gave him a plate of bread and milk
because he is so young. Grandmama wouldn't let me keep him, as I have
three others. I think it was very cruel of grandmama."
"I may keep him," I responded, "I ain't got any grandmama. I'll let him
sleep in my bed."
"You must give him a bath first," she said, "and put him by the fire to
dry. They wouldn't let me bring him into our house, but yours is such a
little one that it will hardly matter."
At this my pride dropped low. "You live in the great big house with the
high wall around the garden," I returned wistfully.
She nodded, drawing back a step or two with a quaint little air of
dignity, and twisting a tassel on her coat in and out of her fingers,
which were encased in white crocheted mittens. The only touch of colour
about her was made by her small red shoes.
"I haven't lived there long, and I remember where we came
from--way--away from here, over yonder across the river." She lifted her
hand and pointed across the brick vault to the distant blue on the
opposite shore of the James. "I liked it over there because it was the
country and we lived by ourselves, mamma and I. She taught me to knit
and I knitted a whole shawl--as big as that--for grandmama. Then papa
came and took us away, but now he has gone and left us again, and I am
glad. I hope he will never come back because he is so very bad and I
don't like him. Mamma likes him, but I don't."
"May I play with you in your garden?" I asked when she had finished;
"I'd like to play with you an' I know ever so many nice ways to play
that I made up out of my head."
She looked at me gravely and, I thought, regretfully.
"You can't because you're common," she answered. "It's a great pity. I
don't really mind it myself," she added gently, seeing my downcast face,
"I'd just every bit as lief play with you as not--a little bit--but
grandmama wouldn't--"
"But I don't want to play with your grandmama," I returned, on the point
of tears.
"Well, you might come sometimes--not very often," she said at last, with
a sympathetic touch on my sleeve, "an' you must come to the side gate
where grandmama won't see you. I'll let you in an' mamma will not mind.
But you mustn't come often," she concluded in a sterner tone, "only once
or twice, so that there won't be any danger of my growin' like you. It
would hurt grandmama dreadfully if I were ever to grow like you."
She paused a moment, and then began dancing up and down in her red shoes
over the coloured leaves. "I'd like to play--play--play all the time!"
she sang, whirling, a vivid little figure, around, the crumbling vault.
The next minute she caught up the puppy in her arms and hugged him
passionately before she turned away.
"His name is Samuel!" she called back over her shoulder as she ran out
of the churchyard.
When she had gone down the short flight of steps and into the wide
street, I tucked Samuel under my arm, and lugged him, not without inward
misgivings, into the kitchen, where my mother stood at the
ironing-board, with one foot on the rocker of Jessy's cradle.
"Ma," I began in a faltering and yet stubborn voice, "I've got a pup."
My mother's foot left the rocker, and she turned squarely on me, with a
smoking iron half poised above the garment she had just sprinkled on the
board.
"Whar did he come from?" she demanded, and moistened the iron with the
thumb of her free hand.
"I got him in the churchyard. His name is Samuel."
For a moment she stared at the two of us in a stony silence. Then her
face twitched as if with pain, the perplexed and anxious look appeared
in her eyes, and her mouth relaxed.
"Wall, he's ugly enough to be named Satan," she said, "but I reckon if
you want to you may put him in a box in the back yard. Give him that
cold sheep's liver in the safe and then you come straight in and comb
yo' head. It looks for all the world like a tousled straw stack."
All the afternoon I sat in our little sitting-room, and faithful to my
promise, shammed sickness, while Samuel lay in his box in the back yard
and howled.
"I'll have that dog taken up the first thing in the mornin'," declared
my mother furiously, as she cleared the supper table.
"I reckon he's lonely out thar, Susan," urged my father, observing my
trembling mouth, and eager, as usual, to put a pacific face on the
moment.
"Lonely, indeed! I'm lonely in here, but I don't set up a howlin'.
Thar're mighty few folks, be they dogs or humans, that get all the
company they want in life."
Once I crept out into the darkness, and hugging Samuel around his dirty
stomach besought him, with tears, to endure his lot in silence; but
though he licked my face rapturously at the time, I had no sooner
entered the house than his voice was lifted anew.
"To think of po' Mrs. Cudlip havin' to mourn in all that noise,"
commented my mother, as I undressed and got into my trundle-bed.
My pillow was quite moist before I went to sleep, while my mother's loud
threats against Samuel sounded from the other side of the room with each
separate garment that she laid on the chair at the foot of her bed. In
sheer desperation at last I pulled the cover over my ears in an effort
to shut out her thin, querulous tones. At the instant I felt that I was
wicked enough to wish that I had been born without any mother, and I
asked myself how _she_ would like it if I raised as great a fuss about
baby Jessy's crying as she did about Samuel's--who didn't make one-half
the noise.
Here the light went out, and I fell asleep, to awaken an hour or two
later because of the candle flash in my eyes. In the centre of the room
my mother was standing in her grey dressing-gown, with a shawl over her
head and the rapturously wriggling body of Samuel in her arms. Too
amazed to utter an exclamation, I watched her silently while she made a
bed with an old flannel petticoat before the waning fire. Then I saw her
bend over and pat the head of the puppy with her knotted hand before she
crept noiselessly back to bed.
At this day I see her figure as distinctly as I saw it that instant by
the candle flame--her soiled grey wrapper clutched over her flat bosom;
her sallow, sharp-featured face, with bluish hollows in the temples over
which her sparse hair strayed in locks; her thin, stooping shoulders
under the knitted shawl; her sad, flint-coloured eyes, holding always
that anxious look as if she were trying to remember some important thing
which she had half forgotten.
So she appeared to my startled gaze for a single minute. Then the light
went out, she faded into the darkness, and I fell asleep.
CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH I PLAY IN THE ENCHANTED GARDEN
For the next two years, when my mother sent me on errands to McKenney's
grocery store, or for a pitcher of milk to old Mrs. Triffit's, who kept
a fascinating green parrot hanging under an arbour of musk cluster
roses, it was my habit to run five or six blocks out of my way, and
measure my growing height against the wall of the enchanted garden. On
the worn bricks, unless they have crumbled away, there may still be seen
the scratches from my penknife, by which I tried to persuade myself that
each rapidly passing week marked a visible increase in my stature.
Though I was a big boy for my age, the top of my straw-coloured hair
reached barely halfway up the spiked wall; and standing on my tiptoes my
hands still came far below the grim iron teeth at the top. Yet I
continued to measure myself, week by week, against the barrier, until at
last the zigzag scratches from my knife began to cover the bricks.
It was on a warm morning in spring during my ninth year, that, while I
stood vigorously scraping the wall over my head, I heard a voice
speaking in indignant tones at my back.
"You bad boy, what are you doing?" it said.
Wheeling about, I stood again face to face with the little girl of the
red shoes and the dancing feet. Except for her shoes she was dressed all
in white just as I had last seen her, and this time, I saw with disgust,
she held a whining and sickly kitten clasped to her breast.
"I know you are doing something you ought not to," she repeated, "what
is it?"
"Nothink," I responded, and stared at her red shoes like one possessed.
"Then why were you crawling so close along the wall to keep me from
seeing you?"
"I wa'nt."
"You wa'nt what?"
"I wa'nt crawlin' along the wall; I was just tryin' to look in," I
answered defiantly.
An old negro "mammy," in a snowy kerchief and apron, appeared suddenly
around the corner near which we stood, and made a grab at the child's
shoulder.
"You jes let 'im alont, honey, en he ain' gwine hu't you," she said.
"He won't hurt me anyway," replied the little girl, as if I were a
suspicious strange dog, "I'm not afraid of him."
Then she made a step forward and held the whining grey kitten toward me.
"Don't you want a cat, boy?" she asked, in a coaxing tone.
My hands flew to my back, and the only reason I did not retreat before
her determined advance was that I could hardly retreat into a brick
wall.
"I've just found it in the alley a minute ago," she explained. "It's
very little. I'd like to keep it, only I've got six already."
"I don't like cats," I replied stubbornly, shaking my head. "I saw Peter
Finn's dog kill one. He shook it by the neck till it was dead. I'm goin'
to train my dog to kill 'em, too."
Raising herself on the toes of her red shoes, she bent upon me a look so
scorching that it might have burned a passage straight through me into
the bricks.
"I knew you were a horrid bad boy. You looked it!" she cried.
At this I saw in my imagination the closed gate of the enchanted garden,
and my budding sportsman's proclivities withered in the white blaze of
her wrath.
"I don't reckon I'll train him to catch 'em by the back of thar necks,"
I hastened to add.
At this she turned toward me again, her whole vivid little face with its
red mouth and arched black eyebrows inspired by a solemn purpose.
"If you'll promise never, never to kill a cat, I'll let you come into
the garden--for a minute," she said.
I hesitated for an instant, dazzled by the prospect and yet bargaining
for better terms. "Will you let me walk under the arbours and down all
the box-bordered paths?"
She nodded. "Just once," she responded gravely.
"An' may I play under the trees on the terrace where you built yo'
houses of moss and stones?"
"For a little while. But I can't play with you because--because you
don't look clean."
My heart sank like lead to my waist line, and I looked down ashamed at
my dirty hands.
"I--I'd rather play with you," I faltered.
"Fur de Lawd's sake, honey, come in en let dat ar gutter limb alont,"
exclaimed the old negress, wagging her turbaned head.
"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do," said her charge, after a deep
moment; "I'll let you play with me for a little while if you'll take the
cat."
"But I ain't got any use for it," I stammered.
"Take it home for a pet. Grandmama won't let any more come on the place.
She's very cruel is grandmama, isn't she, mammy?"
"Go way, chile, dar ain' nobody dat 'ould want all dem ar critters,"
rejoined the old negress.
"_I_ do," said the little girl, and sighed softly.
"I'll take it home with me," I began desperately at last, "if you'll let
me play with you the whole evening."
"And take you into the house?"
"An' take me into the house," I repeated doggedly.
Her glance brushed me from head to foot, while I writhed under it, "I
wonder why you don't wash your face," she observed in her cool,
impersonal manner.
I fell back a step and stared defiantly at the ground.
"I ain't got any water," I answered, driven to bay.
"I think if you'd wash it ever so hard and brush your hair flat on your
head, you'd look very nice--for a boy," she remarked. "I like your eyes
because they're blue, and I have a dog with blue eyes exactly like
yours. Did you ever see a blue-eyed dog? He's a collie. But your hair
stands always on end and it's the colour of straw."
"It growed that way," I returned. "You can't get it to be flat. Ma has
tried."
"I bet I could," she rejoined, and caught at the old woman's hand. "This
is my mammy an' her name is Euphronasia, an' she's got blue eyes an'
golden hair," she cried, beginning to dance up and down in her red
shoes.
"Gawd erlive, lamb, I'se ez black ez a crow's foot," protested the old
woman, at which the dance of the red shoes changed into a stamp of
anger.
"You aren't!--You aren't! You've got blue eyes an' golden hair!"
screamed the child. "I won't let you say you haven't,--I won't let
anybody say you haven't!"
It took a few minutes to pacify her, during which the old negress
perjured herself to the extent of declaring on her word of honour that
she _had_ blue eyes and golden hair; and when the temper of her "lamb"
was appeased, we turned the corner, approached the front of the house,
and ascended the bright bow of steps. As we entered the wide hall, my
heart thumped so violently that I hurriedly buttoned my coat lest the
little girl should hear the sound and turn indignantly to accuse, me of
disturbing the peace. Then as the front door closed softly behind us, I
stood blinking nervously in the dim green light which entered through
the row of columns at the rear, beyond which I saw the curving stairway
and the two miniature yew trees at its foot. There was a strange musty
smell about the house--a smell that brings to me now, when I find it in
old and unlighted buildings, the memory of the high ceiling, the shining
floor over which I moved so cautiously, and the long melancholy rows of
moth-eaten stags' heads upon the wall.
A door at the far end was half open, and inside the room there were two
ladies--one of them very little and old and shrivelled, and the other a
pretty, brown-haired, pliant creature, whom I recognised instantly as
our visitor of that stormy October evening more than two years ago. She
was reading aloud when we entered, in a voice which sounded so soft and
pious that I wondered if I ought to fold my hands and bow my head as I
had been taught to do in the infant Sunday-school.
"Be careful not to mush your words, Sarah; the habit is growing upon
you," remarked the elder lady in a sharp, imperative tone.
"Shall I read it over, mother? I will try to speak more distinctly,"
returned the other submissively, and she began again a long paragraph
which, I gathered vaguely, related to that outward humility which is the
becoming and appropriate garment for a race of miserable sinners.
"That is better," commented the old lady, in an utterly ungrateful
manner, "though you have never succeeded in properly rolling your r's.
There, that will do for to-day, we will continue the sermon upon
Humility to-morrow."
She was so little and thin and wrinkled that it was a mystery to me, as
I looked at her, how she managed to express so much authority through so
small a medium. The chair in which she sat seemed almost to swallow her
in its high arms of faded green leather; and out of her wide, gathered
skirt of brocade, her body rose very erect, like one of my mother's
black-headed bonnet pins out of her draped pincushion. On her head there
was a cap of lace trimmed gayly with purple ribbons, and beneath this
festive adornment, a fringe of false curls, still brown and lustrous,
lent a ghastly coquetry to her mummied features. In the square of
sunshine, between the gauze curtains at the window, a green parrot, in a
wire cage, was scolding viciously while it pecked at a bit of
sponge-cake from its mistress's hand. At the time I was too badly
frightened to notice the wonderful space and richness of the room, with
its carved rosewood bookcases, and its dim portraits of beruffled
cavaliers and gravely smiling ladies.
"Sally," said the old lady, turning upon me a piercing glance which was
like the flash of steel in the sunlight, "is that a boy?"
Going over to the armchair, the little girl stood holding the kitten
behind her, while she kissed her grandmother's cheek.
"What is it, Sally, dear?" asked the younger woman, closing her book
with a sigh.
"It's a boy, mamma," answered the child.
At this the old lady stiffened on her velvet cushions. "I thought I had
told you, Sally," she remarked icily, "that there is nothing that I
object to so much as a boy. Dogs and cats I have tolerated in silence,
but since I have been in this house no boy has set foot inside the
doors."
"I am sure, dear mamma, that Sally did not mean to disobey you,"
murmured the younger woman, almost in tears.
"Yes, I did, mamma," answered the child, gravely, "I meant to disobey
her. But he has such nice blue eyes," she went on eagerly, her lips
glowing as she talked until they matched the bright red of her dancing
shoes; "an' he's goin' to take a kitten home for a pet, an' he says the
reason he doesn't wash his face is because he hasn't any water."
"Is it possible," enquired the old lady in the manner of her pecking
parrot, "that he does not wash his face?"
My pride could bear it no longer, and opening my mouth I spoke in a
loud, high voice.
"If you please, ma'am, I wash my face every day," I said, "and all over
every Saturday night."
She was still feeding the parrot with a bit of cake, and as I spoke, she
turned toward me and waved one of her wiry little hands, which reminded
me of a bird's claw, under its ruffle of yellowed lace.
"Bring him here, Sally, and let me see him," she directed, as if I had
been some newly entrapped savage beast.
Catching me by the arm, Sally obediently led me to the armchair, where I
stood awkward and trembling, with my hands clutching the flaps of my
breeches' pockets, and my eyes on the ground.
For a long pause the old lady surveyed me critically with her merciless
eyes. Then, "Give him a piece of cake, Sally," she remarked, when the
examination was over.
Sally's mother had come up softly behind me while I writhed under the
piercing gaze, and bending over she encircled my shoulders with her
protecting arms.
"He's a dear little fellow, with such pretty blue eyes," she said.
As she spoke I looked up for the first time, and my glance met my
reflection in a long, gold-framed mirror hanging between the windows.
The "pretty blue eyes" I saw, but I saw also the straw-coloured hair,
the broad nose sprinkled with freckles, and the sturdy legs disguised by
the shapeless breeches, which my mother had cut out of a discarded
dolman she had once worn to funerals. It was a figure which might have
raised a laugh in the ill-disposed, but the women before me carried kind
hearts in their bosoms, and even grandmama's chilling scrutiny ended in
nothing worse than a present of cake.
"May I play with him just a little while, grandmama?" begged Sally, and
when the old lady nodded permission, we joined hands and went through
the open window out upon the sunny porch.
On that spring morning the colours of the garden were all clear white
and purple, for at the foot of the curving stairway, and on the upper
terrace, bunches of lilacs bloomed high above the small spring flowers
that bordered the walk. Beneath the fluted columns a single great
snowball bush appeared to float like a cloud in the warm wind. As we
went together down the winding path to the box maze which was sprinkled
with tender green, a squirrel, darting out of one of the latticed
arbours, stopped motionless in the walk and sat looking up at us with a
pair of bright, suspicious eyes.
"I reckon I could make him skeet, if I wanted to," I remarked,
embarrassed rather than malevolent.
Her glance dwelt on me thoughtfully for a moment, while she stood there,
kicking a pebble with the toe of a red shoe.
"An' I reckon I could make _you_ skeet, if I wanted to," she replied
with composure.
Since the parade of mere masculinity had failed to impress her, I
resorted to subtler measures, and kneeling among the small spring
flowers which powdered the lower terrace, I began laboriously erecting a
palace of moss and stones.
"I make one every evening, but when the ghosts come out and walk up an'
down, they scatter them," observed Sally, hanging attentively upon the
work.
"Are there ghosts here really an' have you seen 'em?" I asked.
Stretching out her hand, she swept it in a circle over the growing
palace. "They are all around here--everywhere," she answered. "I saw
them one night when I was running away from my father. Mamma and I hid
in that big box bush down there, an' the ghosts came and walked all
about us. Do you have to run away from your father, too?"
For an instant I hesitated; then my pride triumphed magnificently over
my truthfulness. "I ran clear out to the hill an' all the way down it,"
I rejoined.
"Is his face red and awful?"
"As red as--as an apple."
"An apple ain't awful."
"But he is. I wish you could see him."
"Would he kill you if he caught you?"
"He--he'd eat me," I panted.
She sighed gravely. "I wonder if all fathers are like that?" she said.
"Anyway, I don't believe yours is as bad as mine."
"I'd like to know why he ain't?" I protested indignantly.
Her lips quivered and went upward at the corners with a trick of
expression which I found irresistible even then.
"It's a pity that it's time for you to go home," she observed politely.
"I reckon I can stay a little while longer," I returned.
She shook her head, but I had already gone back to the unfinished
palace, and as the work progressed, she forgot her hint of dismissal in
watching the fairy towers. We were still absorbed in the building when
her mother came down the curving stairway and into the maze of box.
"It's time for you to run home now, pretty blue eyes," she said in her
soft girlish way. Then catching our hands in hers, she turned with a
merry laugh, and ran with us up the terraced walk.
"Is your mamma as beautiful as mine?" asked Sally, when we came to a
breathless stop.
"She's as beautiful as--as a wax doll," I replied stoutly.
"That's right," laughed the lady, stooping to kiss me. "You're a dear
boy. Tell your mother I said so."
She went slowly up the steps as she spoke, and when I looked back a
moment later, I saw her smiling down on me between two great columns,
with the snowball bush floating in the warm wind beneath her and the
swallows flying low in the sunshine over her head.
I had opened the side gate, when I felt a soft, furry touch on my hand,
and Sally thrust the forgotten kitten into my arms.
"Be good to her," she said pleadingly. "Her name's Florabella."
Resisting a dastardly impulse to forswear my bargain, I tucked the
mewing kitten under my coat, where it clawed me unobserved by any
jeering boy in the street. Passing Mrs. Cudlip's house on my way home, I
noticed at once that the window stood invitingly open, and yielding with
a quaking heart to temptation, I leaned inside the vacant room, and
dropped Florabella in the centre of the old lady's easy chair. Then,
fearful of capture, I darted along the pavement and flung myself
breathlessly across our doorstep.
A group of neighbours was gathered in the centre of our little
sitting-room, and among them I recognised the flushed, perspiring face
of Mrs. Cudlip herself. As I entered, the women fell slightly apart, and
I saw that they regarded me with startled, compassionate glances. A
queer, strong smell of drugs was in the air, and near the kitchen door
my father was standing with a frightened and sheepish look on his face,
as if he had been thrust suddenly into a prominence from which he shrank
back abashed.
"Where's ma?" I asked, and my voice sounded loud and unnatural in my own
ears.
One of the women--a large, motherly person, whom I remembered without
recognising, crossed the room with a heavy step and took me into her
arms. At this day I can feel the deep yielding expanse of her bosom,
when pushing her from me, I looked round and repeated my question in a
louder tone.
"Where's ma?"
"She was took of a sudden, dear," replied the woman, still straining me
to her. "It came over her while she was standin' at the stove, an' befo'
anybody could reach her, she dropped right down an' was gone."
She released me as she finished, and walking straight through the
kitchen and the consoling neighbours, I opened the back door, and
closing it after me, sat down on the single step. I can't remember that
I shed a tear or that I suffered, but I can still see as plainly as if
it were yesterday, the clothes-line stretching across the little yard
and the fluttering, half-dried garments along it. There was a striped
shirt of my father's, a faded blue one of mine, a pink slip of baby
Jessy's, and a patched blue and white gingham apron I had seen only that
morning tied at my mother's waist. Between the high board fence, above
the sunken bricks of the yard, they danced as gayly as if she who had
hung them there was not lying dead in the house. Samuel, trotting from a
sunny corner, crept close to my side, with his warm tongue licking my
hand, and so I sat for an hour watching the flutter of the blue, the
pink, and the striped shirts on the clothes-line.
"There ain't nobody to iron 'em now," I said suddenly to Samuel, and
then I wept.
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH I START IN LIFE
With my mother's death all that was homelike and comfortable passed from
our little house. For three days after the funeral the neglected clothes
still hung on the line in the back yard, but on the fourth morning a
slatternly girl, with red hair and arms, came from the grocery store at
the corner, and gathered them in. My little sister was put to nurse with
Mrs. Cudlip next door, and when, at the end of the week, President went
off to work somewhere in a mining town in West Virginia, my father and I
were left alone, except for the spasmodic appearances of the red-haired
slattern. Gradually the dust began to settle and thicken on the dried
cat-tails in the china vases upon the mantel; the "prize" red geranium
dropped its blossoms and withered upon the sill; the soaking dish-cloths
lay in a sloppy pile on the kitchen floor; and the vegetable rinds were
left carelessly to rot in the bucket beside the sink. The old neatness
and order had departed before the garments my mother had washed were
returned again to the tub, and day after day I saw my father shake his
head dismally over the soggy bread and the underdone beef. Whether or
not he ever realised that it was my mother's hand that had kept him
above the surface of life, I shall never know; but when that strong
grasp was relaxed, he went hopelessly, irretrievably, and unresistingly
under. In the beginning there was merely a general wildness and disorder
in his appearance,--first one button, then two, then three dropped from
his coat. After that his linen was changed less often, his hair allowed
to spread more stiffly above his forehead, and the old ashes from his
pipe dislodged less frequently from the creases in his striped shirt. At
the end of three months I noticed a new fact about him--a penetrating
odour of alcohol which belonged to the very air he breathed. His mind
grew slower and seemed at last almost to stop; his blue eyes became
heavier and glazed at times; and presently he fell into the habit of
going out in the evenings, and not returning until I had cried myself to
sleep, under my tattered quilt, with Samuel hugged close in my arms.
Sometimes the red-haired girl would stop after her work for a few
friendly words, proving that a slovenly exterior is by no means
incompatible with a kindly heart; but as a usual thing I was left alone,
after the boys had gone home from their play in the street, to amuse
myself and Samuel as I could through the long evening hours. Sometimes I
brought in an apple or a handful of chestnuts given me by one of the
neighbours and roasted them before the remnants of fire in the stove.
Once or twice I opened my mother's closet and took down her clothes--her
best bombazine dress, her black cashmere mantle trimmed with bugles, her
long rustling crape veil, folded neatly beneath her bonnet in the tall
bandbox--and half in grief, half in curiosity, I invaded those sacred
precincts where my hands had never dared penetrate while she was alive.
My great loss, from which probably in more cheerful surroundings I
should have recovered in a few weeks, was renewed in me every evening by
my loneliness and by the dumb sympathy of Samuel, who would stand
wagging his tail for an hour at the sight of the cloak or the bonnet
that she had worn. Like my father I grew more unkempt and ragged every
day I lived. I ceased to wash myself, because there was nobody to make
me. My buttons dropped off one by one and nobody scolded. I dared no
longer go near the gate of the enchanted garden, fearing that if the
little girl were to catch sight of me, she would call me "dirty," and
run away in disgust. Occasionally my father would clap me upon the
shoulder at breakfast, enquire how I was getting along, and give me a
rusty copper to spend. But for the greater part of the time, I believe,
he was hardly aware of my existence; the vacant, flushed look was almost
always in his face when we met, and he stayed out so late in the evening
that it was not often his stumbling footsteps aroused me when he came
upstairs to bed.
So accustomed had I become to my lonely hours by the kitchen stove, with
Samuel curled up at my feet, that when one night, about six months after
my mother's death, I heard the unexpected sound of my father's tread on
the pavement outside, I turned almost with a feeling of terror, and
waited breathlessly for his unsteady hand on the door. It came after a
minute, followed immediately by his entrance into the kitchen, and to my
amazement I saw presently that he was accompanied by a strange woman,
whom I recognised at a glance as one of those examples of her sex that
my mother had been used to classify sweepingly as "females." She was
plump and jaunty, with yellow hair that hung in tight ringlets down to
her neck, and pink cheeks that looked as if they might "come off" if
they were thoroughly scrubbed. There was about her a spring, a bounce,
an animation that impressed me, in spite of my inherited moral sense, as
decidedly elegant.
My father's eyes looked more vacant and his face fuller than ever.
"Benjy," he began at once in a husky voice, while his companion released
his arm in order to put her ringlets to rights, "I've brought you a new
mother."
At this the female's hands fell from her hair, and she looked round in
horror. "What boy is that, Thomas?" she demanded, poised there in all
her flashing brightness like a figure of polished brass.
"That boy," replied my father, as if at a loss exactly how to account
for me, "that boy is Ben Starr--otherwise Benjy--otherwise--"
He would have gone on forever, I think, in his eagerness to explain me
away, if the woman had not jerked him up with a peremptory question:
"How did he come here?" she enquired.
Since nothing but the naked truth would avail him now, he uttered it at
last in an eloquent monosyllable--"Born."
"But you told me there was not a chick or a child," she exclaimed in a
rage.
For a moment he hesitated; then opening his mouth slowly, he gave voice
to the single witticism of his life.
"That was befo' I married you, dearie," he said.
"Well, how am I to know," demanded the female, "that you haven't got a
parcel of others hidden away?"
"Thar's one, the littlest, put out to nurse next do', an' another, the
biggest, gone to work in the West," he returned in his amiable, childish
manner.
After my unfortunate introduction, however, the addition of a greater
and a lesser appeared to impress her but little. She looked scornfully
about the disorderly room, took off her big, florid bonnet, and began
arranging her hair before the three-cornered mottled mirror on the wall.
Then wheeling round in a temper, her eyes fell on Samuel, sitting
dejectedly on his tail by my mother's old blue and white gingham apron.
"What is that?" she fired straight into my father's face.
"That," he responded, offering his unnecessary information as if it were
a piece of flattery, "air the dawg, Sukey."
"Whose dawg?"
Goaded into defiance by this attack on my only friend, I spoke in a
shrill voice from the corner into which I had retreated. "Mine," I said.
"Wall, I'll tell you what!" exclaimed the female, charging suddenly upon
me, "if I've got to put up with a chance o' kids, I don't reckon I've
got to be plagued with critters, too. Shoo, suh! get out!"
Seizing my mother's broom, she advanced resolutely to the attack, and an
instant later, to my loud distress and to Samuel's unspeakable horror,
she had whisked him across the kitchen and through the back door out
into the yard.
"Steady, Sukey, steady," remarked my father caressingly, much as he
might have spoken to a favourite but unruly heifer. For an instant he
looked a little crestfallen, I saw with pleasure, but as soon as Samuel
was outside and the door had closed, he resumed immediately his usual
expression of foolish good humour. It was impossible, I think, for him
to retain an idea in his mind after the object of it had been removed
from his sight. While I was still drying my eyes on my frayed coat
sleeve, I watched him with resentment begin a series of playful lunges
at the neck of the female, which she received with a sulky and
forbidding air. Stealing away the next minute, I softly opened the back
door and joined the outcast Samuel, where he sat whining upon the step.
The night was very dark, but beyond the looming chimneys a lonely star
winked at me through the thick covering of clouds. I was a sturdy boy
for my age, sound in body, and inwardly not given to sentiment or
softness of any kind; but as I sat there on the doorstep, I felt a lump
rise in my throat at the thought that Samuel and I were two small
outcast animals in the midst of a shivering world. I remembered that
when my mother was alive I had never let her kiss me except when she
paid me by a copper or a slice of bread laid thickly with blackberry
jam; and I told myself desperately that if she could only come back now,
I would let her do it for nothing! She might even whip me because I'd
torn my trousers on the back fence, and I thought I should hardly feel
it. I recalled her last birthday, when I had gone down to the market
with five cents of my own to buy her some green gage plums, of which she
was very fond, and how on the way up the hill, being tempted, I had
eaten them all myself. At the time I had stifled my remorse with the
assurance that she would far rather I should have the plums than eat
them herself, but this was cold comfort to me to-night while I regretted
my selfishness. If I had only saved her half, as I had meant to do if
the hill had not been quite so long and so steep.
Samuel snuggled closer to me and we both shivered, for the night was
fresh. The house had grown quiet inside; my father and his new wife had
evidently left the kitchen and gone upstairs. As I sat there I realised
suddenly, with a pang, that I could never go inside the door again; and
rising to my feet, I struck a match and fumbled for a piece of chalk in
my pocket. Then standing before the door I wrote in large letters across
the panel:--
"DEAR PA.
I have gone to work.
Your Aff. son,
BEN STARR."
The blue flame of the match flickered an instant along the words; then
it went out, and with Samuel at my heels, I crept through the back gate
and down the alley to the next street, which led to the ragged brow of
the hill. Ahead of me, as I turned off into Main Street, the scattered
lights of the city showed like blurred patches upon the darkness.
Gradually, while I went rapidly downhill, I saw the patches change into
a nebulous cloud, and the cloud resolve itself presently into straight
rows of lamps. Few people were in the streets at that hour, and when I
reached the dim building of the Old Market, I found it cold and
deserted, except for a stray cur or two that snarled at Samuel from a
heap of trodden straw under a covered wagon. Despite the fact that I was
for all immediate purposes as homeless as the snarling curs, I was not
without the quickened pulses which attend any situation that a boy may
turn to an adventure. A high heart for desperate circumstances has never
failed me, and it bore me company that night when I came back again with
aching feet to the Old Market, and lay down, holding Samuel tight, on a
pile of straw.
In a little while I awoke because Samuel was barking, and sitting up in
the straw I saw a dim shape huddled beside me, which I made out, after a
few startled blinks, to be the bent figure of a woman wrapped in a black
shawl with fringed ends, which were pulled over her head and knotted
under her chin. From the penetrating odour I had learned to associate
with my father, I judged that she had been lately drinking, and the
tumbled state of my coat convinced me that she had been frustrated by
Samuel in a base design to rifle my pockets. Yet she appeared so
miserable as she sat there rocking from side to side and crying to
herself, that I began all at once to feel very sorry. It seemed to hurt
her to cry and yet I saw that the more it hurt her the more she cried.
"If I were you," I suggested politely, "I'd go home right away."
"Home?" repeated the woman, with a hiccough, "what's home?"
"The place you live in."
"Lor, honey, I don't live in no place. I jest walks."
"But what do you do when you get tired?"
"I walks some mo'."
"An' don't you ever leave off?"
"Only when it's dark like this an' thar's no folks about."
"But what do folks say to you when they see you walkin'?"
"Say to me," she threw back her head and broke into a drunken laugh,
"why, they say to me: 'Step lively!'"
She crawled closer, peering at me greedily under the pale glimmer of the
street lamp.
"Why, you're a darlin' of a boy," she said, "an' such pretty blue eyes!"
Then she rose to her feet and stood swaying unsteadily above me, while
Samuel broke out into angry barks. "Shall I tell you a secret because of
yo' blue eyes?" she asked. "It's this--whatever you do in this world,
you step lively about it. I've done a heap of lookin' an' I've seen the
ones who get on are the ones who step the liveliest. It ain't no matter
where you're goin', it ain't no matter who's befo' you, if you want to
get there first, step lively!"
She went out, taking her awful secret with her, and turning over I fell
asleep again on my pile of straw. "If ever I have a dollar I'll give it
to her so she may stop walkin'," was my last conscious thought.
My next awakening was a very different one, for the light was streaming
into the market, and a cheerful red face was shining down, like a rising
sun, over a wheelbarrow of vegetables.
"Don't you think it's about time all honest folk were out of bed,
sonny?" enquired a voice.
"I ain't been here mo'n an hour," I retorted, resenting the imputation
of slothfulness with a spirit that was not unworthy of my mother.
The open length of the market, I saw now, was beginning to present a
busy, almost a festive, air. Stalls were already laden with fruit and
vegetables, and farmers' wagons covered with canvas, and driven by
sunburnt countrymen, had drawn up to the sidewalk. Rising hurriedly to
my feet, I began rubbing my eyes, for I had been dreaming of the
fragrance of bacon in our little kitchen.
"Now I'd be up an' off to home, if I were you, sonny," observed the
marketman, planting his wheelbarrow of vegetables on the brick floor,
and beginning to wipe off the stall. "The sooner you take yo' whippin',
the sooner you'll set easy again."
"There ain't anybody to whip me," I replied dolefully, staring at the
sign over his head, on which was painted in large letters--"John
Chitling. Fish, Oysters (in season). Vegetables. Fruits."
Stopping midway in his preparations, he turned on me his great beaming
face, so like the rising sun that looked over his shoulder, while I
watched his big jean apron swell with the panting breaths that drew from
his stomach.
"Here's a boy that says he ain't got nobody to whip him!" he exclaimed
to his neighbours in the surrounding stalls,--a poultryman, covered with
feathers, a fish vender, bearing a string of mackerel in either hand,
and a butcher, with his sleeves rolled up and a blood-stained apron
about his waist.
"I al'ays knew you were thick-headed, John Chitling," remarked the fish
dealer, with contempt, "but I never believed you were such a plum fool
as not to know a tramp when you seed him."
"You ain't got but eleven of yo' own," observed the butcher, with a
snicker; "I reckon you'd better take him along to round out the full
dozen."
"If I've got eleven there ain't one of 'em that wa'nt welcome,"
responded John, his slow temper rising, "an' I reckon what the Lord
sends he's willing to provide for."
"Oh, I reckon he is," sneered the fish dealer, who appeared to be of an
unpleasant disposition, "so long as you ain't over-particular about the
quality of the provision."
"Well, he don't provide us with yo' fish, anyway," retorted John; and I
was watching excitedly for the coming blows when the butcher, who had
been looking over me as reflectively as if I had been a spring lamb
brought to slaughter, intervened with a peaceable suggestion that he
should take me into his service.
"I'm on the lookout for a bright boy in my business," he observed.
But the sight of blood on his rolled-up shirt sleeves produced in me
that strange sickness I had inherited from my mother, who used to pay an
old coloured market man to come up and wring the necks of her chickens;
and when the question was put to me if I'd like to be trained up for a
butcher, I drew back and stood ready for instant flight in case they
should attempt' to decide my future by present force.
"I'd rather work for you," I said, looking straight at John Chitling,
for it occurred to me that if I were made to murder anything I'd rather
it would be oysters.
"Ha! ha! he knows by the look of you, you're needin' one to make up the
dozen," exclaimed the butcher.
"Well, I declar he does seem to have taken a regular fancy,"
acknowledged John, flattered by my decision. "I don't want any real
hands now, sonny, but if you'd like to tote the marketing around with
Solomon, I reckon I can let you have a square meal or so along with the
others."
"What'll yo' old woman say to it, John?" enquired the poultryman, with a
loud guffaw, "when you send her a new one of yo' own providin'?"
John Chitling was busily arranging a pile of turnips with what he
doubtless thought was an artistic eye for colour, and the facetiousness
of the poultryman reacted harmlessly from his thick head.
"You needn't worry about my wife, for she ain't worryin'," he rejoined,
and the shine seemed to gather like moisture on his round red face under
his shock of curling red hair. "She takes what comes an' leaves the Lord
to do the tendin'."
At this a shout went up which I did not understand, until I came to know
later that an impression existed in the neighbourhood that the Chitlings
had left entirely too much of the bringing up of their eleven children
in the hands of Providence, who in turn had left them quite as
complacently to the care of the gutter.
"I don't know but what too much trust in the Lord don't work as badly as
too little," observed the fish dealer, while John went on placidly
arranging his turnips and carrots. "What appears to me to be best
religion for a working-man is to hold a kind of middle strip between
faith and downright disbelievin'. Let yo' soul trust to the Lord's
lookin' arter you, but never let yo' hands get so much as an inklin'
that you're a-trustin'. Yes, the safest way is to believe in the Lord on
Sunday, an' on Monday to go to work as if you wa'nt quite so
sartain-sure."
A long finger of sunshine stretched from beyond the chimneys across the
street, and pointed straight to the vegetables on John Chitling's
counter, until the onions glistened like silver balls, and the turnips
and carrots sent out flashes of dull red and bright orange.
"I'll let you overhaul a barrel of apples, sonny," said the big man to
me; "have you got a sharp eye for specks?"
When I replied that I thought I had, he pointed to a barrel from which
the top had been recently knocked. "They're to be sorted in piles,
according to size," he explained, and added, "For such is the
contrariness of human nature that there are some folks as can't see the
apple for the speck, an' others that would a long ways rather have the
speck than the apple. I've one old gentleman for a customer who can't
enjoy eatin' a pippin unless he can find one with a spot that won't keep
till to-morrow."
Kneeling down on the bricks, as he directed, I sorted the yellow apples
until, growing presently faint from hunger, I began to gaze longingly, I
suppose, at the string of fish hanging above my head.
"Maybe you'd like to run across an' get a bite of somethin' befo' you go
on," suggested John, reading my glances.
But I only shook my head, in spite of my gnawing stomach, and went on
doggedly with my sorting, impelled by an inherent determination to do
with the best of me whatever I undertook to do at all. To the possession
of this trait, I can see now in looking back, I have owed any success or
achievement that has been mine--neither to brains nor to chance, but
simply to that instinct to hold fast which was bred in my bone and
structure. For the lack of this quality I have seen men with greater
intellects, with far quicker wits than mine, go down in the struggle.
Brilliancy I have not, nor any particular outward advantage, except that
of size and muscle; but when I was once in the race, I could never see
to right or to left of me, only straight ahead to the goal.
Overhead the sun had risen slowly higher, until the open spaces and the
brick arches were flooded with light. If I had turned I should have seen
the gay vegetable stalls blooming like garden beds down the dim length
of the building. The voices of the market men floated toward me, now
quarrelling, now laughing, now raised to shout at a careless negro or a
prowling dog. I heard the sounds, and I smelt the strong smell of fish
from the gleaming strings of perch and mackerel hanging across the way.
But through it all I did not look up and I did not turn. My first piece
of work was done with the high determination to do it well, and it has
been my conviction from that morning that if I had slighted that barrel
of apples, I should have failed inevitably in my career.
CHAPTER VI
CONCERNING CARROTS
When I had finished my work, I rose from my knees and stood waiting for
John Chitling's directions.
"Run along to the next street," he said kindly, "an' you can tell my
house, I reckon, by the number of children in the gutter. It's the house
with the most children befo' it. You'll find my wife cookin', likely
enough, in the kitchen, an' all you've got to say is that I told you to
tell her that you were hungry. She won't ax you many questions,--that
ain't her way,--but she'll jest set to work an' feed you."
Reassured by this description, I whistled to Samuel, and crossed the
narrow street, crowded with farmers' wagons and empty wheelbarrows, to a
row of dingy houses, with darkened basements, which began at the corner.
By the number of ragged and unwashed children playing among the old tin
cans in the gutter before the second doorway, I concluded that this was
the home of John Chitling; and I was about to enter the close, dimly
lighted passage, when a chorus of piercing screams from the small
Chitlings outside, brought before me a large, slovenly woman, with
slipshod shoes, and a row of curl papers above her forehead. When she
reached the doorway, a small crowd had already gathered upon the
pavement, and I beheld a half-naked urchin of a year or thereabouts,
dangled, head downwards, by the hand of a passing milkman.
"The baby's gone an' swallowed a cent, ma," shrieked a half-dozen treble
voices.
"Well, the Lord be praised that it wa'nt a quarter!" exclaimed Mrs.
Chitling, with a cheerful piety, which impressed me hardly less than did
the placid face with which she gazed upon the howling baby. "There,
there, it ain't near so bad as it might have been. Don't scream so,
Tommy, a cent won't choke him an' a quarter might have."
"But it was _my cent_, an' I ain't got a quarter!" roared Tommy, still
unconsoled.
"Well, I'll give you a quarter when my ship comes in," responded his
mother, at which the grief of the small financier began gradually to
subside.
"I had it right in my hand," he sniffled, with his knuckles at his eyes,
"an' I jest put it into the baby's mouth for keepin'."
By this time Mrs. Chitling had received the baby into her arms, and
turning with an unruffled manner, she bore him into the house, where she
stopped his mouth with a spoonful of blackberry jam. As she replaced the
jar on the shelf she looked down, and for the first time became aware of
my presence.
"He ain't swallowed anything of yours, has he?" she enquired. "If he has
you'll have to put the complaint in writing because the neighbours are
al'ays comin' to me for the things that are inside of him. I've never
been able to shake anything out of him," she added placidly, "except one
of Mrs. Haskin's bugle beads."
She delivered this with such perfect amiability that I was emboldened to
say in my politest manner, "If you please, ma'am, Mr. Chitling told me I
was to say that he said that I was hungry."
"So the baby really ain't took anything of yours?" she asked, relieved.
"Well, I al'ays said he didn't do half the damage they accused him of."
As I possessed nothing except the clothes in which I stood, and even
that elastic urchin could hardly have accommodated these, I hastened to
assure her that I was the bearer of no complaint. This appeared to win
her entirely, and her large motherly face beamed upon me beneath the
aureole of curl papers that radiated from her forehead. With a single
movement she cleared a space on the disorderly kitchen table and slapped
down a plate, with a piece missing, as if the baby had taken a bite out
of it.
"To think of yo' goin' hungry at yo' age an' without a mother," she
said, opening a safe, and whipping several slices of bacon and a couple
of eggs into a skillet. "Why, it would make me turn in my grave if I
thought of one of my eleven wantin' a bite of meat an' not havin' it."
As she switched about in her cheerful, slovenly way, I saw that her
skirt had sagged at the back into what appeared to be an habitual gap,
and from beneath it there showed a black calico petticoat of a dingy
shade. But when a little later she sat me at the table, with Samuel's
breakfast on the floor beside me, I forgot her slatternly dress, her
halo of curl papers, and her slipshod shoes, while I plied my fork and
my fingers under the motherly effulgence of her smile. Tied into a high
chair in one corner, the baby sat bolt upright, with his thumb in his
mouth, deriving apparently the greatest enjoyment from watching my
appetite; and before I had finished, the ten cheerful children trooped
in and gathered about me. "Give him another cake, ma!" "It's my turn to
help him next, ma!" "I'll pour out his coffee for him!" "Oh, ma, let me
feed the dog," rose in a jubilant chorus of shrieks.
"An' he ain't got any mother!" roared Tommy suddenly, and burst into
tears.
A sob lodged in my throat, but before the choking sound of it reached my
ears, I felt myself enfolded in Mrs. Chitling's embrace. As I looked up
at her from this haven of refuge, it seemed to me that her curl papers
were transfigured into a halo, and that her face shone with a heavenly
beauty.
I was given a bed in the attic, with the six younger Chitlings, and two
days later, when my father tracked me to my hiding-place, I hid under
the dark staircase in the hall, and heard my protector deliver an
eloquent invective on the subject of stepmothers. It was the one
occasion in my long acquaintance with her when I saw her fairly roused
out of her amiable inertia. Albemarle, the baby, had spilled bacon gravy
over her dress that very morning, and I had heard her console him
immediately with the assurance that there was "a plenty more in the
dish." But possessed though she was with that peculiar insight which
discerns in every misfortune a hidden blessing, in stepmothers, I found,
and in stepmothers alone, she could discern nothing except sermons.
"To think of yo' havin' the brazen impudence to come here arter the harm
you've done that po' defenceless darling boy," she said, with a noble
dignity which obscured somehow her slovenly figure and her dirty
kitchen. Peering out from under the staircase, I could see that my
father stood quite humbly before her, twirling his hatbrim nervously in
his hands.
"I ax you to believe, mum, what is the gospel truth," he replied, "that
I wa'nt meanin' any harm to Benjy."
"Not meanin' any harm an' you brought him a stepmother befo' six months
was up?" she cried. "Well, that ain't _my_ way of lookin' at it, for
I've a mother's heart and it takes a mother's heart to stand the tricks
of children," she added, glancing down at the gravy stains on her bosom,
"an' it ain't to be supposed--is it?--that a stepmother should have a
mother's heart? It ain't natur--is it?--I put it to you, that any man or
woman should be born with a natchel taste for screamin' an' kickin' an'
bein' splashed with gravy, an' the only thing that's goin' to cultivate
them tastes in anybody is bringin' ten or eleven of 'em into the world.
Lord, suh, I wa'nt born with the love of dirt an' fussin' any mo' than
you. It just comes along o' motherhood like so much else. Now it stands
to reason that you ain't goin' to enjoy the trouble a child makes unless
that child is your own. Why, what did my baby do this mornin' when he
was learnin' to walk, but catch holt of the dish an' bring all the gravy
down over me. Is thar any livin' soul, I ax you plainly, expected to see
the cuteness in a thing like that except a mother? An' what I say is
that unless you can see the cuteness in a child instead of the badness,
you ain't got no business to bring 'em up--no, not even if you are the
President himself!--"
Just here I distinctly heard my father murmur in his humble voice
something about having named an infant after the office and not the man.
But so brief was the pause in Mrs. Chitling's flow of remonstrance that
his interjection was overwhelmed almost before it was uttered. Her very
slovenliness, expressing as it did what she had given up rather than
what she was, served in a measure to increase the solemn majesty with
which she spoke; and I gathered easily that my father's small wits were
vanquished by the first charge of her impassioned rhetoric.
"I thank you kindly, mum, it is all jest as you say," he replied, with
the submissiveness of utter defeat, "but, you see, a man has got to give
a thought to his washin'. It stands to reason--don't it?"--he concluded
with a flash of direct inspiration, "that thar ain't any way to get a
woman to wash free for you except to marry her."
The logic of this appeared to impress even Mrs. Chitling, for she
hesitated an instant before replying, and when she finally spoke, I
thought her tone had lost something of its decision.
"An' to make it worse you took a yaller-headed one an' they're the kind
that gad," she retorted feebly.
My father shook his head, while a stubborn expression settled on his
sheepish features.
"Thar's the cookin' an' the washin' for her to think of," he said. "I
ain't got any use for a woman that ain't satisfied with the pleasures of
home."
"The moral kind are, Mr. Starr," rejoined Mrs. Chitling, who had
relapsed into a condition of placid indolence. "An' as far as I am
concerned since the first of my eleven came, I've never wanted to put on
my bonnet an' set foot outside that do'. My kitchen is my kingdom," she
added, with dignity, "an' for my part, I ain't got any use for those
women who are everlastingly standin' up for thar rights. What does a
woman want with rights, I say, when she can enjoy all the virtues? What
does she want to be standin' up for anyway as long as she can set?"
"Thar's no doubt that it is true, mum," rejoined my father; and when he
took his leave a few minutes afterwards, their relations appeared to
have become extremely friendly,--not to say confidential. For an instant
I trembled in my hiding-place, half expecting to be delivered into his
hands. But he departed at last without discovering me, and I emerged
from the darkness and stood before Mrs. Chitling, who had begun
absent-mindedly to take down her curl papers.
"Most likely it ain't his fault arter all," she observed, for her
judgment of him had already become a part of the general softness and
pliability of her criticism of life; "he seems to be a nice sensible
body with proper ideas about women. I like a man that knows a woman's
place, an' I like a woman that knows it, too. Yo' ma was a decent,
sober, hard-workin' person, wa'nt she, Benjy?"
I replied that she was always in her kitchen and generally in her
washtub, except when she went to funerals.
"Well, I ain't any moral objection to a funeral now an' then, or some
other sober kind of entertainment," returned Mrs. Chitling, removing her
curl papers in order to put on fresh ones, "but what I say is that the
woman who wants pleasure outside her do' ain't the woman that she ought
to be, that's all. What can she have, I ax, any mo' than she's got?
Ain't she got everything already that the men don't want? Ain't
sweetness an' virtue, an' patience an' long suffering an' childbearin'
enough for her without her impudently standin' up in the face of men an'
axin' for mo'? Had she rather have a vote than the respect of men, an'
ain't the respect of men enough to fill any honest female's life?"
In the beginning of her discourse, she had turned aside to slap a
portion of cornmeal into a cracked yellow bowl, and after pouring a
little water out of a broken dipper, she began whipping the dough with a
long, irregular stroke that scattered a shower of fine drops at every
revolution of her hand. Two of the children had got into a fight over a
basin of apple parings, and she left her yellow bowl and separated them
with a hand that bestowed a patch of wet meal on the hair of one and on
the face of another. Not once did she hasten her preparations or
relinquish the cheerful serenity which endowed her large, loose figure
with a kind of majesty.
The next day I started in as general assistant and market boy to John
Chitling, and when I was not sorting over ripe vegetables or barrels of
apples fresh from the orchard, I was toiling up the long hill, with a
split basket, containing somebody's marketing, on my arm. By degrees I
learned the names of John Chitling's patrons, the separate ways to their
houses, which always seemed divided by absurd distances, and the faces
of the negro cooks who met me at the kitchen steps and relieved me of my
burden. In the beginning I was accompanied on my rounds by a fat,
smudge-nosed youth some six or eight years my senior, who smoked vile
tobacco and enlivened the way by villainous abuses of John Chitling and
the universe. For the first months, I fear, my outlook upon the
customers I served was largely coloured by his narratives, but when at
last he dropped off and went on a new job at the butcher's, I arrived
gradually at a more correct, and certainly a more charitable, point of
view. By the end of the winter I had ceased to believe that John
Chitling was a skinflint and his customers all vipers.
In the bright soft weather of that spring the city opened into a bloom
of faint pink and white, which comes back to me like a delicate
fragrance. The old gardens are gone now, with their honeysuckle arbours,
their cleanly swept walks, bordered by rows of miniature box, their
deep, odorous bowers of microphylla and musk cluster roses. Yet I can
look back still through the gauzy shadows of elms and sycamores; I can
hear still the rich, singing call of the negro drivers, as the covered
wagons from country farms passed sleepily through the hot sunshine which
fell between the arching trees; and I can smell again the air steeped in
a fragrance that is less that of flowers than of the subtle atmosphere
of an unforgettable youth. To-day the city is the same city no longer,
nor is the man who writes this the market boy who toiled up the long
hill in the blossoming spring, with the seeds of the future quickening
in brain and heart.
The morning that I remember best is the one on which I carried the day's
marketing to an old grey house, with beds of wallflowers growing close
against the stuccoed bricks, and a shrub that flowered bright yellow
glancing through the tall gate at the rear. I had passed the wallflowers
as was my custom, and entering the gate at the back, had delivered my
basket at the kitchen door, when, as I turned to retrace my steps, I was
detained by the scolding voice of the pink-turbaned negro cook.
"Hi! if you ain' clean furgit de car'ots!" she cried.
Now the carrots had been placed in the basket, as I had seen with my own
eyes, by the hands of John Chitling himself, and I had been cautioned at
the time not to drop them out in my ascent of the steep hill. There was
a lady in the grey house, he had informed me, who was supposed to
subsist upon carrots alone, and who was in consequence extremely
particular as to their size and flavour.
"Are you sure they ain't among the vegetables?" I asked. "I saw them put
in myself."
"Huh! en you seed 'em fall out, too, I lay!" rejoined the negress,
protruding her thick red lips as she turned the basket upside down with
an indignant blow.
"If they're lost, I'll go back and bring others," I said, thinking
disconsolately of the hill.
"En you 'ould be back hyer agin in time fur supper," retorted the
outraged divinity. "Wat you reckon Miss Mitty wants wid car'ots fur 'er
supper? Dey is hern, dey ain' mine, but ef'n dey 'us mine I'd lamn you
twel you couldn't see ter set. Hit's bad enough ter hev ter live erlong
in de same worl' wid de slue-footed po' white trash widout hevin' dem
a-snatchin' de car'ots outer yo' ve'y mouf."
My temper, never of the mildest, was stung quickly to a retort, and I
was about to order her to hold her tongue and return me my basket, when
the door into the house opened and shut, and the little girl of the
enchanted garden appeared in the flesh before me.
"I want the plum cake you promised me, Aunt Mirabella," she cried; "and
oh! I hope you've stuffed it full of plums!" Then her glance fell upon
me and I saw her thick black eyebrows arch merrily over her sparkling
grey eyes. "It's my boy! My dear common boy!" she exclaimed, with a rush
toward me. For the first time I noticed then that she was dressed in
mourning, and that her black clothes intensified the dark brightness of
her look. "Oh, I _am_ glad to see you," she added, seizing my hand.
I gazed up at her, wounded rather than pleased. "I shan't be a common
boy always," I answered.
"Do you mind my calling you one? If you do, I won't," she said, and
without waiting a minute, "What are you doing here? I thought you lived
over on Church Hill."
"I don't now. Ma died and I ran away."
"My mother died, too," she returned softly, "and then grandmama."
For a moment there was a pause. Then I said with a kind of stubborn
pride, "I ran away."
The sadness passed from her and she turned on me in a glow of animation.
"Oh, I should just love dearly to run away!" she exclaimed.
"You couldn't. You're a girl."
"I could, too, if I chose."
"Then why don't you choose?"
"Because of Aunt Mitty and Aunt Matoaca. They haven't anybody but me."
"I left my father," I replied proudly, "and I didn't care one single
bit. That's the trouble with girls. They're always caring."
"Well, I'm not caring for you," she retorted with crushing effect,
shaking back the soft cloud of hair on her shoulders.
"Boys don't care," I rejoined with indifference, taking up my market
basket.
She detained me with a glance. "There's one thing they care
about--dreadfully," she said.
"No, there ain't."
Without replying in words she went over to the stove, and standing on
tiptoe, gingerly removed a hot plum cake, small and round and shaped
like a muffin, from the smoking oven.
"I reckon they care about plum cake," she remarked tauntingly, and as
she held it toward me it smelt divinely.
But my pride was in arms, for I remembered the cup of milk she had
refused disdainfully more than three years ago in our little kitchen.
"No, they don't," I replied with a stoicism that might have added lustre
to a nobler cause.
In my heart I was hoping that she would drop the cake into my basket in
spite of my protest, not only sparing my pride by an act of magnanimity,
but allowing me at the same time the felicity of munching the plums on
my way back to the Old Market. But the next moment, to my surprise and
indignation, she took a generous bite of the very dainty she had offered
me, making, while she ate it, provoking faces of a rapturous enjoyment.
I was lingering in the doorway with a scornful yet fascinated gaze on
the diminishing cake, when the pink-turbaned cook, who had gone out to
empty a basin of pea shells, entered and resumed her querulous abuse.
"De bes' thing you kin do is ter clear out," she said, "you en yo'
car'ots. He ain' fit'n fur you ter tu'n yo' eyes on, honey," she added
to the child, "en I don' reckon yo' ma would let yo' wipe yo' foot on
'im ef'n she 'uz alive. Yes'm, Miss Mitty, I'se a-comin'!"
Her voice rose high in response to a call from the house, but before she
could leave the kitchen, the door behind the little girl opened, and a
lady said reprovingly:--
"Sally, Sally, haven't I told you to keep away from the kitchen?"
"Oh, Aunt Mitty, I had to come for my plum cake," pleaded Sally, "and
Aunt Matoaca said that I might."
An elderly lady, all soft black and old yellow lace, stood in the
doorway. Then before she could answer a second one appeared at her side,
and I had a vision of two slender maidenly figures, who reminded me,
meek heads, drooping faces, and creamy lace caps, of the wallflowers in
the border outside blooming in a patch of sunshine close against the old
grey house. At first there seemed to me to be no visible difference
between them, but after a minute, I saw that the second one was gentler
and smaller, with a softer smile and a more shrinking manner.
"It was my fault, Sister Mitty," she said, "I told Sally that she might
come after her plum cake."
Her voice was so low and mild that I was amazed the next instant to hear
the taller lady respond.
"Of course, Sister Matoaca, you were at liberty to do as you thought
right, but I cannot conceal from you that I consider a person of your
dangerous views an unsafe guardian for a young girl."
She advanced a step into the kitchen, and as Miss Matoaca followed her
she replied in an abashed and faltering voice:--
"I am sorry, Sister Mitty, that we do not agree in our principles. There
is nothing else that I will not sacrifice to you, but when a question of
principle is concerned, however painful it is to me, I must be firm."
At this, while I was wondering what terrible thing a principle could
possibly turn out to be, I saw Miss Mitty draw herself up until she
fairly towered like a marble column about the shrinking figure in front
of her.
"But such principles, Sister Matoaca!" she exclaimed.
A flush rose to the clear brown surface of the little lady's cheek, and
more than ever, I thought, she resembled one of the wallflowers in the
border outside. Her head, with its shiny parting of soft chestnut hair,
was lifted with a mild, yet spirited gesture, and I saw the delicate
lace at her throat and wrists tremble as if a faint wind had passed.
"Remember, sister, that my ancestors as well as yours fought against
oppression in three wars," she said in her sweet low voice that had, to
my ears, the sound of a silver bell, "and it has become my painful duty,
after long deliberation with my conscience, to inform you--I consider
that taxation without representation is tyranny."
"Sally, go into the house," commanded Miss Mitty, "I cannot permit you
to hear such dangerous sentiments expressed."
"Let me go, Sister Mitty," said Miss Matoaca, for the flash of spirit
had left her as wan and drooping as a blighted flower; "I will go
myself," and turning meekly, she left the kitchen, while Sally took a
second cake from the oven and came over to where I stood.
"I'll just put this into your basket anyway," she remarked, "even if you
don't care about it."
"Come, child," urged Miss Mitty, waiting, "but give the boy his cake
first."
The cake was put into my hands, not into the basket, and I took a large,
delicious mouthful of it while I went by the meek wallflowers standing
in a row, like prim maiden ladies, against the old grey house.
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH I MOUNT THE FIRST RUNG OF THE LADDER
As I passed through the gate and turned down Franklin Street under a
great sycamore that grew midway of the pavement, I vowed passionately in
my heart that I would remain "a common boy" no longer. With the plum
cake in my hand, and the delicious taste of it in my mouth, I placed my
basket on the ground and leaned against the silvery body of the tree,
with my eyes on Samuel, sitting very erect, with his paws held up, his
tail wagging, and his expectant gaze on my face.
"What can we do about it, Samuel? How can we begin? Are we common to the
bone, I wonder? and how are we going to change?"
But Samuel's thoughts were on the last bit of cake, and when I gave it
to him, he stopped begging like a wise dog that has what he wanted, and
lay down on the sidewalk with his eyes closed and his nose between his
outstretched paws.
A gentle wind stirred overhead, and I smelt the sharp sweet fragrance of
the sycamore, which cast a delicate lace-work of shadows on the crooked
brick pavement. Not only the great sycamore and myself and Samuel, but
the whole blossoming city appeared to me in a dream; and as I glanced
down the quiet street, over which the large, slow shadows moved to and
fro, I saw through a mist the blurred grey-green foliage in the Capitol
Square. In the ground the seeds of the new South, which was in truth but
the resurrected spirit of the old, still germinated in darkness. But the
air, though I did not know it, was already full of the promise of the
industrial awakening, the constructive impulse, the recovered energy,
that was yet to be, and in which I, leaning there a barefooted market
boy, was to have my part.
An aged negress, in a red bandanna turban, with a pipe in her mouth,
stopped to rest in the shadow of the sycamore, placing her basket, full
of onions and tomatoes, on the pavement beside my empty one.
"Do you know who lives in that grey house, Mammy?" I asked.
Twisting the stem of her pipe to the corner of her mouth, she sat
nodding at me, while the wind fluttered the wisps of grizzled hair
escaping from beneath her red and yellow head-dress.
"Go 'way, chile, whar you done come f'om?" she demanded suspiciously.
"Ain't you ever hyern er Marse Bland? He riz me."
I shook my head, sufficiently humbled by my plebeian ignorance.
"Are the two old ladies his daughters?"
"Wat you call Miss Mitty en Miss Matoaca ole fur? Dey ain' ole," she
responded indignantly. "I use'n ter b'long ter Marse Bland befo' de war,
en I kin recollect de day dat e'vy one er dem wuz born. Dey's all daid
now cep'n Miss Mitty en Miss Matoaca, en Marse Bland he's daid, too."
"Then who is the little girl? Where did she come from?"
There was a dandelion blooming in a tuft of grass between the loosened
bricks of the pavement, and I imprisoned it in my bare toes while I
waited impatiently for her answer.
"Dat's Miss Sary's chile. She ran away wid Marse Harry Mickleborough, in
Marse Bland's lifetime, en he 'ouldn't lay eyes on her f'om dat day ter
his deaf. Miss Mitty en Miss Matoaca dey ain' ole, but Miss Sary she
want nuttin' mo'n a chile w'en she went off."
"But why did her father never see her again?"
"Dat was 'long er Marse Mickleborough, boy, but I ain' gwine inter de
ens en de outs er dat. Hit mought er been becaze er Marse
Mickleborough's fiddle, but I ain' sayin' dat hit wuz er dat hit wuzn't.
Dar's some folks dat cyarn' stan' de squeak er a fiddle, en he sutney
did fiddle a mont'ous lot. He usen ter beat Miss Sary, too, I hyern
tell, jes es you mought hev prognosticate er a fiddlin' man; but she
ain' never come home twel atter her pa wuz daid en buried over yonder in
Hollywood. Den w'en de will wuz read Marse Bland had lef ev'y las' cent
clean away f'om her en de chile. Atter Miss Mitty en Miss Matoaca die de
hull pa'cel er hit's er gwine ter some no 'count hospital whar dey take
live folks ter pieces en den put 'em tergedder agin."
"You mean the little girl won't get a blessed cent?" I asked, and my
toes pinched the head of the dandelion until it dropped from its stem.
"Ain't I done tole you how 'tis?" demanded the negress in exasperation,
rising from her seat on the curbing, "en wat mek you keep on axin' over
wat I done tole you?"
She went off muttering to herself, while she clenched the stem of her
corncob pipe between her toothless gums; and picking up my basket and
whistling to Samuel, I walked slowly downhill, with the problem of the
future working excitedly in my brain.
"A market boy is obliged to be a common boy," I thought, and
immediately: "Then I will not be a market boy any longer."
So hopeless the next instant did my present condition of abject
ignorance appear to me, that I found myself regretting that I had not
asked advice of the aged negress who had rested beside me in the shadow
of the sycamore. I wondered if she would consider the selling of
newspapers a less degrading employment than the hawking of vegetables,
and with the thought, I saw stretching before me, in all its alluring
brightness, that royal road of success which leads from the castle of
dreams. One instant I resolved to start life as a fruit vender on the
train, and the next I was wildly imagining myself the president of the
Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, with a jingling bunch of
seals and a gold-headed stick. When at last I reached the Old Market I
found that the gayety had departed from it, and it appeared slovenly and
disgusting to my awakened eyes. The fruit and vegetables, so fresh and
inviting in the early morning, were now stale and wilted; a swarm of
flies hung like a black cloud around the joint suspended before the
stall of Perkins, the butcher; and as I passed the stand of the fish
dealer, the odour of decaying fish entered my nostrils. Was it the same
place I had left only a few hours before, or what sudden change in
myself had revealed to me the grim ugliness of its aspect? "He's a
common boy," the little girl had said of me almost four years ago, and I
felt now, as I had felt then, the sting of a whip on my bare flesh at
her words. Come what might I would cease to be "a common boy" from that
hour.
In the afternoon I bought an armful of "The Evening Planet," and
wandered up Franklin Street on a venture, crying the papers aloud with
an agreeable assurance that I had deserted huckstering to enter
journalism. As I passed the garden of the old grey house my voice rang
out shrilly, yet with a quavering note in it, "Eve-ning Pla-net!" and
almost before the sound had passed under the sycamores, the gate in the
wall opened cautiously and one of the ladies called to me timidly with
her face pressed to the crack. The two sisters were so much alike that
it was a minute before I discovered the one who spoke to be Miss
Matoaca.
"Will you please let me have a paper," she said apologetically, "we do
not take it. There is no gentleman in the house. I--I am interested in
the marriages and deaths," she added, in a louder tone as if some one
were standing close to her beyond the garden gate.
As I gave her the paper she stretched out her hand, under its yellowed
lace ruffle, and dropped the money into my palm.
"I shall be obliged to you if you will call out every day when you pass
here," she remarked, after a minute; "I am almost always in the garden
at this hour."
I promised her that I should certainly remember, and she was about to
draw inside the garden with a gentle, flower-like motion of her head,
when a gentleman, with a gold-headed walking-stick in his hand, lunged
suddenly round the smaller sycamore at the corner, and entrapped her
between the wall and the gate before she had time to retreat.
"So I've caught you at it, eh, Miss Matoaca!" he exclaimed, shaking a
pudgy forefinger into her face, with an air of playful gallantry.
"Buying newspapers!"
Poor Miss Matoaca, fluttering like a leaf before this onslaught of
chivalry, could only drop her bright brown eyes to the ground and flush
a delicate pink, which the General must have admired.
"They--they are excellent to keep away moths!" she stammered.
The sly and merry look, which I discovered afterwards to be his
invincible weapon with the ladies, appeared instantly in his watery grey
eyes.
"And you don't even glance at the political headlines? Ah, confess, Miss
Matoaca."
He was very stout, very red in the face, very round in the stomach, very
roguish in the eyes, yet I realised even then that some twenty years
before--when the results of his sportive masculinity had not become
visible in his appearance--he must have been handsome enough to have
melted even Miss Matoaca's heart. Like a faint lingering beam of autumn
sunshine, this comeliness, this blithe and unforgettable charm of youth,
still hovered about his heavy and plethoric figure. Across his expansive
front there stretched a massive gold chain of a unique pattern, and from
this chain, I saw now, there hung a jingling and fascinating bunch of
seals. The gentleman I might have forgotten, but that bunch of seals had
occupied for three long years a particular corner of my memory; and in
the instant that my eyes fell upon it, I saw again the ragged hill
covered with pokeberry, yarrow, and stunted sumach, the anchored vessel
outlined against the rosy sunset, and the panting stranger, who had
stopped to rest with his hand on my shoulder. I remembered suddenly that
I wanted to become the president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic
Railroad.
He stood there now in all his redundant flesh before me, his large
mottled cheeks inflated with laughter, his full red lips pursed into a
gay and mocking expression. To me he personified success, happiness,
achievement--the other shining extreme from my own obscurity and
commonness; but the effect upon poor little Miss Matoaca was quite the
opposite, I judged the next minute, from the one that he had intended. I
watched her fragile shoulders straighten and a glow rather than a flash
of spirit pass into her uplifted face.
"With your record, General Bolingbroke," she said, in a quavering yet
courageous voice, "you may refuse your approval, but not your respect,
to a matter of principle."
The roguish twinkle, which was still so charming, appealed like the lost
spirit of youth in the General's eyes.
"Ah, Miss Matoaca," he rejoined, in his most gallant manner, "principles
do not apply to ladies!"
At this Miss Matoaca drew herself up almost haughtily, and I felt as I
looked at her that only her sex had kept her from becoming a general
herself.
"It is very painful to me to disagree with the gentlemen I know," she
said, "but when it is a matter of conviction I feel that even the
respect of gentlemen should be sacrificed. My sister Mitty considers me
quite indelicate, but I cannot conceal from you that--" her voice broke
and dropped, but rose again instantly with a clear, silvery sound, "I
consider that taxation without representation is tyranny."
A virgin martyr refusing to sacrifice a dove to Venus might have uttered
her costly heresy in such a voice and with such a look; but the General
met it suavely with a flourish of his wide-brimmed hat and a blandishing
smile. He was one of those gentlemen of the old school, I came to know
later, to whom it was an inherent impossibility to appear without
affectation in the presence of a member of the opposite sex. A high
liver, and a good fellow every inch of him, he could be natural, racy,
charming, and without vanity, when in the midst of men; but let so much
as the rustle of a petticoat sound on the pavement, and he would begin
to strut and plume himself as instinctively as the cock in the barnyard.
"But what would you do with a vote, my dear Miss Matoaca," he protested
airily. "Put it into a pie?"
His witticism, which he hardly seemed aware of until it was uttered,
afforded him the next instant an enjoyment so hilarious that I saw his
waist shake like a bowl of jelly between the flapping folds of his
alpaca coat. While he stood there with his large white cravat twisted
awry by the swelling of his crimson neck, and his legs, in a pair of
duck trousers, planted very far apart on the sidewalk, he presented the
aspect of a man who felt himself to be a graduate in the experimental
science of what he probably would have called "the sex." When I heard
him frequently alluded to afterwards as "a gay old bird," I wondered
that I had not fitted the phrase to him as he fixed his swimming,
parrot-like eyes on the flushed face of Miss Matoaca.
"If that's all the use you'd make of it, I think we might safely trust
it to you," he observed with a flattering glance. "A woman who can make
your mince pies, dear lady, need not worry about her rights."
"How is George, General?" asked Miss Matoaca, with an air of gentle,
offended dignity. "I heard he had come to live with you since his
mother's death."
"So he has, the rascal," responded the General, "and a nephew under
twelve years of age is a severe strain on the habits of an elderly
bachelor."
The corners of Miss Matoaca's mouth grew suddenly prim.
"I suppose you could hardly close the door on your sister's orphan son,"
she observed, in a severer tone than I had yet heard her use.
He sighed, and the sigh appeared to pass in the form of a tremor through
his white-trousered legs.
"Ah, that's it," he rejoined. "You ladies ought to be thankful that you
haven't our responsibilities. No, no, thank you, I won't come in. My
respects to Miss Mitty and to yourself."
The gate closed softly as if after a love tryst, Miss Matoaca
disappeared into the garden, and the General's expression changed from
its jocose and smiling flattery to a look of genuine annoyance.
"No, I don't want a paper, boy!" he exclaimed.
With a wave of his gold-headed cane in my direction, he would have
passed on his way, but at his first step, happily for me, his toe struck
against a loosened brick, and the pain of the shock caused him to bend
over and begin rubbing his gouty foot, with an exclamation that sounded
suspiciously like an oath. Where was the roguish humour now in the small
watery grey eyes? The gout, not "the sex," had him ignominiously by the
heel.
"If you please, General, do you remember me?" I enquired timidly.
Still clasping his foot, he turned a crimson glare upon me.
"Damnation!--I mean Good Lord, have mercy on my toe, why should I
remember you?"
"It was on Church Hill almost four years ago, you promised," I suggested
as a gentle spur to his memory.
"And you expect me to remember what I promised four years ago?" he
rejoined with a sly twinkle. "Why, bless my soul, you're worse than a
woman."
"You asked me, sir, if I wanted to grow up and be President," I
returned, not without resentment.
Releasing his ankle abruptly, he stood up and slapped his thigh.
"Great Jehosaphat! If you ain't the little chap who was content to be
nothing less than God Almighty!" he exclaimed. "I've told that story a
hundred times if I've told it once."
"Then perhaps you'll help me a little, sir," I suggested.
"Help you to become God Almighty?" he chuckled.
"No, sir, help me to be the president of the Great South Midland and
Atlantic Railroad."
"Then you'll be satisfied with the lesser office, eh?"
"I shall, sir, if--if there isn't anything better."
Again he slapped his thigh and again he chuckled. "But I've got one boy
already. I don't want another," he protested. "Good Lord, one is bad
enough when he's not your own."
Whether or not he really supposed that I was a serious applicant for
adoption, I cannot say, but his face put on immediately an harassed and
suffering look.
"Have you ever had a twinge of gout, boy?" he enquired.
"No, sir."
"Then you're lucky--damned lucky. When you go to bed to-night you get
down on your knees and thank the Lord that you've never had a twinge of
gout. You can even eat a strawberry without feeling it, I reckon?"
I replied humbly that I certainly could if I ever got the chance.
"And yet you ain't satisfied--you're asking to be president of a damned
railroad--a boy who can eat a strawberry without feeling it!"
He moved on, limping slightly, and like a small persistent devil of
temptation, I kept at his elbow.
"Isn't there anything that you can do for me, sir?" I asked, at the
point of tears.
"Do for you? Bless my soul, boy, if I had your joints I shouldn't want
anything that anybody could do for me. Can't you walk, hop, skip, jump,
all you want to?"
This was so manifestly unfair that I retorted stubbornly, "But I don't
want to."
He glanced down on me with a flicker of his still charming smile.
"Well, you would if you were president of the Great South Midland and
Atlantic and had looked into the evening paper," he said.
"Are you president of it still, sir?"
"Eh? eh? You'll be wanting to push me out of my job next, I suppose?"
"I'd like to have it when you are dead, sir," I replied.
But this instead of gratifying the General appeared plainly to annoy
him. "There now, you'd better run along and sell your papers," he
remarked irritably. "If I give you a dime, will you quit bothering me?"
"I'd rather you'd give me a start, sir, as you promised."
"Good Lord! There you are again! Do you know the meaning of
n-u-i-s-a-n-c-e, boy?"
"No, sir."
"Well, ask your teacher the next time you go to school."
"I don't go to school. I work."
"You work, eh? Well, look here, let's see. What do you want of me?"
"I thought you might tell me how to begin. I don't want to stay common."
For a moment his attention seemed fixed on a gold pencil which he had
taken from his waistcoat pocket. Then opening his card-case he scribbled
a line on a card and handed it to me. "If you choose you may take that
to Bob Brackett at the Old Dominion Tobacco Works, on Twenty-fifth
Street, near the river," he said, not unkindly. "If he happens to want a
boy, he may give you a job; but remember, I don't promise you that he
will want one,--and if he does, it isn't likely he'd make you president
on the spot," he concluded, with a chuckle.
Waving a gesture of dismissal he started off at a hobble; then catching
the eye of a lady in a passing carriage, he straightened himself, bowed
with a gallant flourish of his wide-brimmed hat, and went on with a look
of agony but a jaunty pace. As I turned, a minute later, to discover who
could have wrought this startling change in the behaviour of the
General, an open surrey, the bottom filled with a pink cloud of wild
azaleas, stopped at the curbing before the grey house, and the faces of
Miss Mitty and Sally shone upon me over the blossoms. The child was
coloured like a flower from the sun and wind, and there was a soft dewy
look about her flushed cheeks, and her very full red lips. At the corner
of her mouth, near her square little chin, a tiny white scar showed like
a dimple, giving to her lower lip when she laughed an expression of
charming archness. I remember these things now--at the moment there was
no room for them in my whirling thoughts.
"Oh!" cried the little girl in a burst of happiness, "there's my boy!"
The next minute she had leaped out of the carriage and was bounding
across the pavement. Her arms were filled with azalea, and loosened
petals fluttered like a swarm of pink and white moths around her.
"What are you doing, boy?" she asked. "Where is your basket?"
"It's at the market. I'm selling papers."
"Come, Sally," commanded Miss Mitty, stepping out of the surrey with the
rest of the flowers. "You must not stop in the street to talk to people
you don't know."
"But I do know him, Aunt Mitty, he brings our marketing."
"Well, come in anyway. You are breaking the flowers."
The strong, heady perfume filled my nostrils, though when I remember it
now it changes to the scent of wallflowers, which clings always about my
memory of the old grey house, with its delicate lace curtains draped
back from the small square window-panes as if a face looked out on the
crooked pavement.
"Please, Aunt Mitty, let me buy a paper," begged the child.
"A paper, Sally! What on earth would you do with a paper?"
"Couldn't I roll up my hair in it, Auntie?"
"You don't roll up your hair in newspapers. Here, come in. I can't wait
any longer."
Lingering an instant, Sally leaned toward me over the pink cloud of
azalea. "I'd just love to play with you and Samuel," she said with the
sparkling animation I remembered from our first meeting, "but dear Aunt
Mitty has so much pride, you know."
She bent still lower, gave Samuel an impassioned hug with her free arm,
and then turning quickly away ran up the short flight of steps and
disappeared into the house. The next instant the door closed sharply
after her, and only the small rosy petals fluttering in the wind were
left to prove to me that I was really awake and it was not a dream.
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH MY EDUCATION BEGINS
There was no lingering at kitchen doorways with scolding white-turbaned
cooks next morning, for as soon as I had delivered the marketing, I
returned the basket to John Chitling, and set out down Twenty-fifth
Street in the direction of the river. As I went on, a dry, pungent odour
seemed to escape from the pavement beneath and invade the air. The earth
was drenched with it, the crumbling bricks, the negro hovels, the few
sickly ailantus trees, exuded the sharp scent, and even the wind brought
stray wafts, as from a giant's pipe, when it blew in gusts up from the
river-bottom. Overhead the sky appeared to hang flat and low as if seen
through a thin brown veil, and the ancient warehouses, sloping toward
the river, rose like sombre prisons out of the murky air. It was still
before the introduction of modern machinery into the factories, and as I
approached the rotting wooden steps which led into the largest building,
loose leaves of tobacco, scattered in the unloading, rustled with a
sharp, crackling noise under my feet.
Inside, a clerk on a high stool, with a massive ledger before him,
looked up at my entrance, and stuck his pen behind his ear with a sigh
of relief.
"A gentleman told me you might want a boy, sir," I began.
He got down from his stool, and sauntering across the room, took a long
drink from a bucket of water that stood by the door.
"What gentleman?" he enquired, as he flirted a few drops on the steps
outside, and returned the tin dipper to the rusty nail over the bucket.
I drew out the card, which I had kept carefully wrapped in a piece of
brown paper in my trousers' pocket. When I handed it to him, he looked
at it with a low whistle and stood twirling it in his fingers.
"The gentleman owns about nine-tenths of the business," he remarked for
my information. Then turning his head he called over his shoulder to
some one hidden behind the massive ledgers on the desk. "I say, Bob,
here's a boy the General's sent along. What'll you do with him?"
Bob, a big, blowzy man, who appeared to be upon terms of intimacy with
every clerk in the office, came leisurely out into the room, and looked
me over with what I felt to be a shrewd and yet not unkindly glance.
"It's the second he's sent down in two weeks," he observed, "but this
one seems sprightly enough. What's your name, boy?"
"Ben Starr."
"Well, Ben, what're you good for?"
"'Most anything, sir."
"'Most anything, eh? Well, come along, and I'll put you at 'most
anything."
He spoke in a pleasant, jovial tone, which made me adore him on the
spot; and as he led me across a dark hall and up a sagging flight of
steps, he enquired good-humouredly how I had met General Bolingbroke and
why he had given me his card.
"He's a great man, is the General!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm. "When
you met him, my boy, you met the biggest man in the South to-day."
Immediately the crimson face, the white-trousered legs, the round
stomach, and even the gouty toe, were surrounded in my imagination with
a romantic halo. "What's he done to make him so big?" I asked.
"Done? Why, he's done everything. He's opened the South, he's restored
trade, he's made an honest fortune out of the carpet-baggers. It's
something to own nine-tenths of the Old Dominion Tobacco Works, and to
be vice-president of the Bonfield Trust Company, but it's a long sight
better to be president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad.
If you happen to know of a bigger job than that, I wish you'd point it
out."
I couldn't point it out, and so I told him, at which he gave a friendly
guffaw and led the way in silence up the sagging staircase. At that
moment all that had been mere formless ambition in my mind was
concentrated into a single burning desire; and I swore to myself, as I
followed Bob, the manager, up the dark staircase to the leaf department,
that I, too, would become before I died the biggest man in the South and
the president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad. The idea
which was to possess me utterly for thirty years dropped into my brain
and took root on that morning in the heavy atmosphere of the Old
Dominion Tobacco Works. From that hour I walked not aimlessly, but
toward a definite end. I might start in life, I told myself, with a
market basket, but I would start also with the resolution that out of
the market basket the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad should
arise. The vow was still on my lips when the large sliding door on the
landing swung open, and we entered an immense barnlike room, in which
three or four hundred negroes were at work stemming tobacco.
At first the stagnant fumes of the dry leaf mingling with the odours of
so many tightly packed bodies, caused me to turn suddenly dizzy, and the
rows of shining black faces swam before my eyes in a blur with the
brilliantly dyed turbans of the women. Then I gritted my teeth fiercely,
the mist cleared, and I listened undisturbed to the melancholy chant
which accompanied the rhythmic movements of the lithe brown fingers.
At either end of the room, which covered the entire length and breadth
of the building, the windows were shut fast, and on the outside, close
against the greenish panes, innumerable flies swarmed like a black
curtain. Before the long troughs stretching waist high from wall to
wall, hundreds of negroes stood ceaselessly stripping the dry leaves
from the stems; and above the soft golden brown piles of tobacco, the
blur of colour separated into distinct and vivid splashes of red, blue,
and orange. Back and forth in the obscurity these brilliantly coloured
turbans nodded like savage flowers amid a crowd of black faces, in which
the eyes alone, very large, wide open, and with gleaming white circles
around the pupils, appeared to me to be really alive and human. They
were singing as we entered, and the sound did not stop while the manager
crossed the floor and paused for an instant beside the nearest worker, a
brawny, coal-black negro, with a red shirt open at his throat, on which
I saw a strange, jagged scar, running from ear to chest, like the
enigmatical symbol of some savage rite I could not understand. Without
turning his head at the manager's approach, he picked up a great leaf
and stripped it from the stem at a single stroke, while his tremendous
bass voice rolled like the music of an organ over the deep piles of
tobacco before which he stood. Above this rich volume of sound fluted
the piercing thin sopranos of the women, piping higher, higher, until
the ancient hymn resolved itself into something that was neither human
nor animal, but so elemental, so primeval, that it was like a voice
imprisoned in the soil--a dumb and inarticulate music, rooted deep, and
without consciousness, in the passionate earth. Over the mass of dark
faces, as they rocked back and forth, I saw light shadows tremble, as
faint and swift as the shadows of passing clouds, while here and there a
bright red or yellow head-dress rose slightly higher than its
neighbours, and floated above the rippling mass like a flower on a
stream. And it seemed to me as I stood there, half terrified by the
close, hot smells and the savage colours, that something within me
stirred and awakened like a secret that I had carried shut up in myself
since birth. The music grew louder in my ears, as if I, too, were a part
of it, and for the first time I heard clearly the words:--
"Christ totes de young lambs in his bosom, bosom,
Christ totes de young lambs in his bosom, bosom,
Christ totes de young lambs in his bosom, bosom,
Fa-ther, de ye-ar-ur Ju-bi-le-e!"
Bob, the manager, picked up a leaf from the nearest trough, examined it
carefully, and tossed it aside. The great black negro turned his head
slowly toward him, the jagged scar standing out like a cord above the
open collar of his red shirt.
"Christ leads de ole sheep by still watah, watah,
Christ leads de ole sheep by still watah, watah,
Christ leads de ole sheep by still watah, watah,
Fa-ther, de ye-ar-ur Ju-bi-le-e!"
"If I were to leave you here an hour what would you do, Ben?" asked the
manager suddenly, speaking close to my ear.
I thought for a moment. "Learn to stem tobacco quick'en they do," I
replied at last.
"What have you found out since you came in?"
"That you must strip the leaf off clean and throw it into the big trough
that slides it downstairs somewhere."
A smile crossed his face. "If I give you a job it won't be much more
than running up and down stairs with messages," he said; "that's what a
nigger can't do." He hesitated an instant; "but that's the way I began,"
he added kindly, "under General Bolingbroke."
I looked up quickly, "And was it the way _he_ began?"
"Oh, well, hardly. He belongs to one of the old families, you know. His
father was a great planter and he started on top."
My crestfallen look must have moved his pity, I think, for he said as he
turned away and we walked down the long room, "It ain't the start that
makes the man, youngster, but the man that makes the start."
The doors swung together behind us, and we descended the dark staircase,
with the piercing soprano voices fluting in our ears.
"Christ leads de ole sheep by still watah, watah,
Christ leads de ole sheep by still watah, watah."
* * * * *
That afternoon I went home, full of hope, to my attic in the Old Market
quarter. Then as the weeks went on, and I took my place gradually as a
small laborious worker in the buzzing hive of human industry, whatever
romance had attached itself to the tobacco factory, scattered and
vanished in the hard, dry atmosphere of the reality. My part was to run
errands up and down the dark staircase for the manager of the leaf
department, or to stand for hours on hot days in the stagnant air, amid
the reeking smells of the big room, where the army of "stemmers" rocked
ceaselessly back and forth to the sound of their savage music. In all
those weary weeks I had passed General Bolingbroke but once, and by the
blank look on his great perspiring face, I saw that my hero had
forgotten utterly the incident of my existence. Yet as I turned on the
curbing and looked after him, while he ploughed, wiping his forehead, up
the long hill, under the leaves of mulberry and catalpa trees, I felt
instinctively that my future triumphs would be in a measure the
overthrow of the things for which he and his generation had stood. The
manager's casual phrase "the old families," had bred in me a secret
resentment, for I knew in my heart that the genial aristocracy,
represented by the president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic
Railroad, was in reality the enemy, and not the friend, of such as I.
The long, hot summer unfolded slowly while I trudged to the factory in
the blinding mornings and back again to the Old Market at the
suffocating hour of sunset. Over the doors of the negro hovels luxuriant
gourd vines hung in festoons of large fan-shaped leaves, and above the
high plank fences at the back, gaudy sunflowers nodded their heads to me
as I went wearily by. The richer quarter of the city had blossomed into
a fragrant bower, but I saw only the squalid surroundings of the Old
Market, with its covered wagons, its overripe melons, its prowling dogs
hunting in refuse heaps, and beyond this the crooked street, which led
to the tobacco factory and then sagged slowly down to the river-bottom.
Sometimes I would lean from my little window at night into the stifling
atmosphere, where the humming of a mosquito, or the whirring of a moth,
made the only noise, and think of the enchanted garden lying desolate
and lovely under the soft shining of the stars. Were the ghosts moving
up and down the terraces in the mazes of scented box, I wondered? Then
the garden would fade far away from me into a cool, still distance,
while I knelt with my head in my hands, panting for breath in the
motionless air. Outside the shadow of the Old Market lay over all,
stretching sombre and black to where I crouched, a lonely, half-naked
child at my attic window. And so at last, bathed in sweat, I would fall
asleep, to awaken at dawn when the covered wagons passed through the
streets below, and the cry of "Wa-ter-mil-lion! Wa-ter-mil-lion!" rang
in the silence. Then the sun would rise slowly, the day begin, and Mrs.
Chitling's cheerful bustle would start anew. Tired, sleepless,
despairing, I would set off to work at last, while the Great South
Midland Railroad receded farther and farther into the dim province of
inaccessible things.
After a long August day, when the factory had shut down while it was yet
afternoon, I crept up to Church Hill, and looked again over the spiked
wall into the enchanted garden. It was deserted and seemed very sad, I
thought, for its only tenants appeared to be the swallows that flew,
with short cries, in and out of the white columns. On the front door a
large sign hung, reading "For Sale"; and turning away with a sinking
heart, I went on to Mrs. Cudlip's in the hope of catching a glimpse of
baby Jessy, whom I had not seen since I ran away. She was playing on the
sidewalk, a pretty, golden-haired little girl, with the melting blue
eyes of my father; and when she caught sight of me, she gave a gurgling
cry and ran straight to me out of the arms of President, who, I saw to
my surprise, was standing in the doorway of our old home. He was taller
than my father now, with the same kind, sheepish face, and the awkward
movements as of an overgrown boy.
"Wall, if it ain't Benjy!" he exclaimed, his slow wits paralysed by my
unexpected appearance. "If it ain't Benjy!"
Turning aside he spat a wad of tobacco into the gutter, and then coming
toward me, seized both my hands and wrung them in his big fists with a
grip that hurt.
"You're comin' along now, ain't you, Benjy?" he inquired proudly.
"Tith my Pethedent," lisped baby Jessy at his knees, and he stooped from
his great height and lifted her in his arms with the gentleness of a
woman.
"What about an eddication, Benjy boy?" he asked over the golden curls.
"I can't get an education and work, too," I answered, "and I've got to
work. How's pa?"
"He's taken an awful fondness to the bottle," replied President, with a
sly wink, "an' if thar's a thing on earth that can fill a man's thoughts
till it crowds out everything else in it, it's the bottle. But speakin'
of an eddication, you see I never had one either, an' I tell you, when
you don't have it, you miss it every blessed minute of yo' life.
Whenever I see a man step on ahead of me in the race, I say to myself,
'Thar goes an eddication. It's the eddication in him that's a-movin' an'
not the man.' You mark my words, Benjy, I've stood stock still an' seen
'em stridin' on that didn't have one bloomin' thing inside of 'em except
an eddication."
"But how am I to get it, President?" I asked dolefully. "I've got to
work."
"Get it out of books, Benjy. It's in 'em if you only have the patience
to stick at 'em till you get it out. I never had on o'count of my eyes
and my slowness, but you're young an' peart an' you don't get confused
by the printed letters."
Diving into his bulging pockets, he took out a big leather purse, from
which he extracted a dollar and handed it to me. "Let that go toward an
eddication," he said, adding: "If you can get it out of books I'll send
you a dollar toward it every week I live. That's a kind of starter,
anyway, ain't it?"
I replied that I thought it was, and carefully twisted the money into
the torn lining of my pocket.
"I'm goin' back to West Virginy to-night," he resumed. "Arter I've seen
you an' the little sister thar ain't any use my hangin' on out of work."
"Have you got a good place, President?"
"As good as can be expected for a plain man without an eddication," he
responded sadly, and a half hour later, when I said good-by to him, with
a sob, he came to the brow of the hill, with little Jessy clinging to
his hand, and called after me solemnly, "Remember, Benjy boy, what you
want is an eddication!"
So impressed was I by the earnestness of this advice, that as I went
back down the dreary hill, with its musty second-hand clothes' shops,
its noisy barrooms, and its general aspect of decay and poverty, I felt
that my surroundings smothered me because I lacked the peculiar virtue
which enabled a man to overcome the adverse circumstances in which he
was born. The hot August day was drawing to its end, and the stagnant
air in which I moved seemed burdened with sweat until it had become a
tangible thing. The gourd vines were hanging limp now over the negro
hovels, as if the weight of the yellow globes dragged them to the earth;
and in the small square yards at the back, the wilted sunflowers seemed
trying to hide their scorched faces from the last gaze of a too ardent
lover. Whole families had swarmed out into the streets, and from time to
time I stepped over a negro urchin, who lay flat on his stomach,
drinking the juice of an overripe watermelon out of the rind. Above the
dirt and squalor the street cries still rang out from covered wagons
which crawled ceaslessly back and forth from the country to the Old
Market. "Wa-ter-mil-lion. Wa-ter-mil-l-i-o-n! Hyer's yo' Wa-ter-mil-lion
fresh f'om de vi-ne!" And as I shut my eyes against the dirt, and my
nostrils against the odours, I saw always in my imagination the
enchanted garden, with its cool sweet magnolias and laburnums, and its
great white columns from which the swallows flew, with short cries,
toward the sunset.
A white shopkeeper and a mulatto woman had got into a quarrel on the
pavement, and turning away to avoid them, I stumbled by accident into
the open door of a second-hand shop, where the proprietor sat on an old
cooking-stove drinking a glass of beer. As I started back my frightened
glance lit on a heap of dusty volumes in one corner, and in reply to a
question, which I put the next instant in a trembling voice, I was
informed that I might have the whole pile for fifty cents, provided I'd
clear them out on the spot. The bargain was no sooner clinched than I
gathered the books in my arms and staggered under their weight in the
direction of Mrs. Chitling's. Even for a grown man they would have made
a big armful, and when at last I toiled up to my attic, and dropped on
my knees by the open window, I was shaking from head to foot with
exhaustion. The dust was thick on my hands and arms, and as I turned
them over eagerly by the red light of the sunset, the worm-eaten
bindings left queer greenish stains on my fingers. Among a number of
loose magazines called _The Farmer's Friend_, I found an illustrated,
rather handsome copy of "Pilgrim's Progress," presented, as an
inscription on the flyleaf testified, to one Jeremiah Wakefield as a
reward for deportment; the entire eight volumes of "Sir Charles
Grandison"; a complete Johnson's Dictionary, with the binding missing;
and Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" in faded crimson morocco. When I
had dusted them carefully on an old shirt, and arranged them on the
three-cornered shelf at the head of my cot, I felt, with a glow of
satisfaction, that the foundations of that education to which President
had contributed were already laid in my brain. If the secret of the
future had been imprisoned in those mouldy books, I could hardly have
attacked them with greater earnestness; and there was probably no
accident in my life which directed so powerfully my fortunes as the one
that sent me stumbling into that second-hand shop on that afternoon in
mid-August. I can imagine what I should have been if I had never had the
help of a friend in my career, but when I try to think of myself as
unaided by Johnson's Dictionary, or by "Sir Charles Grandison," whose
prosiest speeches I committed joyfully to memory, my fancy stumbles in
vain in the attempt. For five drudging years those books were my
constant companions, my one resource, and to conceive of myself without
them is to conceive of another and an entirely different man. If there
was harm in any of them, which I doubt, it was clothed to appeal to an
older and a less ignorant imagination than mine; and from the elaborate
treatises on love melancholy in Burton's "Anatomy," I extracted merely
the fine aromatic flavour of his quotations.
CHAPTER IX
I LEARN A LITTLE LATIN AND A GREAT DEAL OF LIFE
My opportunity came at last when Bob Brackett, the manager of the leaf
department, discovered me one afternoon tucked away with the half of
Johnson's Dictionary in a corner of the stemming room, where the negroes
were singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."
"I say, Ben, why ain't you out on the floor?" he asked.
I laid the book face downwards on the window-sill, and came out,
embarrassed and secretive, to where he stood. "I just dropped down there
a minute ago to rest," I replied.
"You weren't resting, you were reading. Show me the book."
Without a word I handed him the great dictionary, and he fingered the
dog-eared pages with a critical and reflective air.
"Holy Moses! it ain't a blessed thing except words!" he exclaimed, after
a minute. "Do you mean to tell me you can sit down and read a dictionary
for the pure pleasure of reading?"
"I wasn't reading, I was learning," I answered.
"Learning how?"
"Learning by heart. I've already got as far as the _d_'s."
"You mean you can say every last word of them _a_'s, _b_'s, and _c_'s
straight off?"
I nodded gravely, my hands behind my back, my eyes on the beams in the
ceiling. "As far as the _d_'s."
"And you're doing all this learning just to get an education, ain't
you?"
My eyes dropped from the beams and I shook my head, "I don't believe
it's there, sir."
"What? Where?"
"I don't believe an education is in them. I did once."
For a moment he stood turning over the discoloured leaves without
replying. "I reckon you can tell me the meaning of 'most any word, eh,
Ben?" he demanded.
"Not unless it begins with _a_, _b_, or _c_, sir."
"Well, any word beginning with an _a_, then, that's something. There're
a precious lot of 'em. How about allelujah, how's that for a mouthful?"
Instinctively my eyes closed, and I began my reply in a tone that seemed
to chime in with the negro's melody.
'Falsely written for Hallelujah, a word of spiritual exultation, used in
hymns; signifies, _Praise God. He will set his tongue, to those pious
divine strains; which may be a proper præludium to those allelujahs, he
hopes eternally to sing._
"'_Government of the Tongue._'"
"Hooray! That's a whopper!" he exclaimed, with enthusiasm. "What's a
præ-lu-di-um?"
"I told you I hadn't got to _p_'s yet," I returned, not without
resentment.
The hymn changed suddenly; the negro in the red shirt, with the scar on
his neck, turned his great oxlike eyes upon me, and the next instant his
superb voice rolled, rich and deep, as the sound of an organ, from his
bared black chest.
"A-settin' in de kingdom,
Y-e-s, m-y-L-a-w-d!"
"Well, you've got gumption," said Bob, the manager. "That's what I
always lacked--just plain gumption, and when you ain't got it, there's
nothing to take its place. I was talking to General Bolingbroke about
you yesterday, Ben, and that's what I said. 'There's but one word for
that boy, General, and it's gumption.'"
I accepted the tribute with a swelling heart. "What good will it do me
if I can't get an education?" I demanded.
"It's that will give it to you, Ben. Why, don't you know every blessed
word in the English language that begins with an _a_? That's more than I
know--that's more, I reckon," he burst out, "than the General himself
knows!"
In this there was comfort, if a feeble one. "But there're so many other
things besides the _a_'s that you've got to learn," I responded.
"Yes, but if you learn the _a_'s, you'll learn the other things,--now
ain't that logic? The trouble with me, you see, is that I learned the
other things without knowing a blamed sight of an _a_. I tell you what
I'll do, Ben, my boy, I'll speak to the General about it the Very next
time he comes to the factory."
He gave me back the dictionary, and I applied myself to its pages with a
terrible earnestness while I awaited the great man's attention.
It was a week before it came, for the General, having gone North on
affairs of the railroad, did not condescend to concern himself with my
destiny until the more important business was arranged and despatched.
Being in a bland mood, however, upon his return, it appeared that he had
listened and expressed himself to some purpose at last.
"Tell him to go to Theophilus Pry and let me have his report," was what
he had said.
"But who is Theophilus Pry?" I enquired, when this was repeated to me by
Bob Brackett.
"Dr. Theophilus Pry, an old friend of the General's, who takes his
nephew to coach in the evenings. The doctor's very poor, I believe,
because they say of him that he never refuses a patient and never sends
a bill. He swears there isn't enough knowledge in his profession to make
it worth anybody's money."
"And where does he live?"
"In that little old house with the office in the yard on Franklin
Street. The General says you're to go to him this evening at eight
o'clock."
The sound of my beating heart was so loud in my ears that I hurriedly
buttoned my jacket across it. Then as if I were to be examined on
Johnson's Dictionary, my lips began to move silently while I spelled
over the biggest words. If I could only confine my future conversations
to the use of the _a_'s and _b_'s, I felt that I might safely pass
through life without desperate disaster in the matter of speech.
It was a mild October evening, with a smoky blue haze, through which a
single star shone over the clipped box in Dr. Theophilus Pry's garden,
when I opened the iron gate and went softly along the pebbled walk to
the square little office standing detached from the house. A black
servant, carrying a plate of waffles from the outside kitchen, informed
me in a querulous voice that the doctor was still at supper, but I might
go in and wait; and accepting the suggestion with more amiability than
accompanied it, I entered the small, cheerful room, where a lamp, with a
lowered wick, burned under a green shade. Around the walls there were
many ancient volumes in bindings of stout English calf, and on the
mantelpiece, above which hung one of the original engravings of Latane's
"Burial," two enormous glass jars, marked "Calomel" and "Quinine,"
presided over the apartment with an air of medicinal solemnity. They
were the only visible and positive evidence of the doctor's calling in
life, and when I knew him better in after years, I discovered that they
were the only drugs he admitted to a place in the profession of healing.
To the day of his death, he administered these alternatives with a high
finality and an imposing presence. It was told of him that he considered
but one symptom, and this he discovered with his hand on the patient's
pulse and his eyes on a big loud-ticking watch in a hunting case. If the
pulse was quick, he prescribed quinine, if sluggish, he ordered calomel.
To dally with minor ailments was as much beneath him as to temporise
with modern medicine. In his last years he was still suspicious of
vaccination, and entertained a profound contempt for the knife. Beyond
his faith in calomel and quinine, there were but two articles in his
creed; he believed first in cleanliness, secondly in God. "Madam," he is
reported to have remarked irreverently to a mother whom he found praying
for her child's recovery in the midst of a dirty house, "when God
doesn't respond to prayer, He sometimes answers a broom and a bucket of
soapsuds." Honest, affable, adored, he presented the singular spectacle
of a physician who scorned medicine, and yet who, it was said, had fewer
deaths and more recoveries to his credit than any other practitioner of
his generation. This belief arose probably in the legendary glamour
which resulted from his boundless, though mysterious, charities; for
despite the fact that he had until his death a large and devoted
following, he lived all his life in a condition of genteel poverty. His
single weakness was, I believe, an utter inability to appreciate the
exchange value of dollars and cents; and this failing grew upon him so
rapidly in his declining years that Mrs. Clay, his widowed sister, who
kept his house, was at last obliged to "put up pickles" for the market
in order to keep a roof over her brother's distinguished head.
I was sitting in one of the worn leather chairs under the green lamp,
when the door opened and shut quickly, and Dr. Theophilus Pry came in
and held out his hand.
"So you're the lad George was telling me about," he began at once, with
a charming, straightforward courtesy. "I hope I haven't kept you
waiting many minutes, sir."
He was spare and tall, with stooping shoulders, a hooked nose, bearing a
few red veins, and a smile that lit up his face like the flash of a
lantern. Everything about his clothes that could be coloured was of a
bright, strong red; his cravat, his big silk handkerchief, and the polka
dots in his black stockings. "Yes, I like any colour as long as it's
red," he was fond of saying with his genial chuckle.
Bending over the green baize cloth on the table, he pushed away a pile
of examination papers, and raised the wick of the lamp.
"So you've started out to learn Dr. Johnson's Dictionary by heart," he
observed. "Now by a fair calculation how long do you suppose it will
take you?"
I replied with diffidence that it appeared to me now as if it would very
likely take me till the Day of Judgment.
"Well, 'tis as good an occupation as most, and a long ways better than
some," commented the doctor. "You've come to me, haven't you, because
you think you'd like to learn a little Latin?"
"I'd like to learn anything, sir, that will help me to get on."
"What's the business?"
"Tobacco."
"I don't know that Latin will help you much there, unless it aids you to
name a blend."
"It--it isn't only that, sir, I--I want an education--not just a common
one."
A smile broke suddenly like a beam of light on his face, and I
understood all at once why his calomel and his quinine so often cured.
At that moment I should have swallowed tar water on faith if he had
prescribed it.
"I don't know much about you, my lad," he remarked with a grave,
old-fashioned courtesy, which lifted me several feet above the spot of
carpet on which I stood, "but a gentleman who starts out to learn old
Samuel Johnson's Dictionary by heart, is a gentleman I'll give my hand
to."
With my pulses throbbing hard, I watched him take down a dog-eared Latin
Grammar, and begin turning the pages; and when, after a minute, he put a
few simple questions to me, I answered as well as I could for the lump
in my throat. "It's the fashion now to neglect the classics," he said
sadly, "and a man had the impertinence to tell me yesterday that the
only use for a dead language was to write prescriptions for sick people
in it. But I maintain, and I will repeat it, that you never find a
gentleman of cultured and elevated tastes who has not at least a bowing
acquaintance with the Latin language. The common man may deride--"
I looked up quickly. "If you please, sir, I'd like to learn it," I broke
in with determination.
He glanced at me kindly, secretly flattered, I suspect, by my
spontaneous tribute to his eloquence, and the leaves of the Latin
Grammar had fluttered open, when the door swung wide with a cheerful
bang, and a boy of about my own age, though considerably under my height
and size, entered the room.
"I didn't get in from the ball game till an hour ago, doctor," he
exclaimed. "Uncle George says please don't slam me if I am late."
Some surface resemblance to my hero of the railroad made me aware, even
before Dr. Pry introduced us, that the newcomer was the "young George"
of whom I had heard. He was a fresh, high-coloured boy, whose features
showed even now a slight forecast of General Bolingbroke's awful
redness. Before I looked: at him I got a vague impression that he was
handsome; after I looked at him I began to wonder curiously why he was
not? His hair was of a bright chestnut colour, very curly, and clipped
unusually close, in order to hide the natural wave of which, I
discovered later, he was ashamed. He had pleasant brown eyes, and a
merry smile, which lent a singular charm to his face when it hovered
about his mouth.
"I say, doctor, I wish you'd let me off to-night. I'll do double
to-morrow," he begged, and then turned to me with his pleasant, intimate
manner: "Don't you hate Latin? I do. Before Dr. Theophilus began
coaching me I went to a woman, and that was worse--she made it so silly.
I hate women, don't you?"
"Young George," observed Dr. Theophilus, with sternness, "for every
disrespectful allusion to the ladies, I shall give you an extra page of
grammar."
"I'm no worse than uncle, doctor. Uncle says--"
"I forbid you to repeat any flippant remarks of General Bolingbroke's,
George, and you may tell him so, with my compliments, at breakfast."
Opening his book, he glanced at me gravely over its pages, and the next
instant my education in the ancient languages and the finer graces of
society commenced.
On that first evening I won a place in the doctor's affections, which, I
like to think, I never really lost in the many changes the future
brought me. My obsequious respect for dead tongues redeemed, to a great
measure, the appalling ignorance I immediately displayed of the merest
rudiments of geography and history; and when the time came, I believe it
even reconciled him to my bodily stature, which always appeared to him
to be too large to conform to the smaller requirements of society. In my
fourteenth year I began to grow rapidly, and his chief complaint of me
after this was that I never learned to manage my hands and feet as if
they really belonged to me--a failing that I am perfectly aware I was
never able entirely to overcome. It would doubtless take the breeding of
all the Bolingbrokes, he once informed me, with a sigh, to enable a man
to carry a stature such as mine with the careless dignity which might
possibly have been attained by a moderate birth and a smaller body.
"Nature has intended you for a prize-fighter, but God has made of you a
gentleman," he added, with his fine, characteristic philosophy, which
escaped me at the moment; "it is a blessing, I suppose, to be endowed
with a healthy body, but if I were you, I should endeavour to keep my
members constantly in my mind. It is the next best thing to behaving as
if they did not exist."
This was said so regretfully that I hadn't the heart to inform him that
my mind, being of limited dimensions, found difficulty in accommodating
at one and the same time my bodily members and the Latin language. Even
my "Cæsar" caused me less misery at this period than did the problem of
the proper disposal of my hands and feet. Do what I would they were
hopelessly (by some singular freak of nature) in my way. The breeding of
all the Bolingbrokes would have been taxed to its utmost, I believe, to
behave for a single instant as if they did not exist.
Except for the embarrassment of my increasing stature, the years that
followed my introduction to Dr. Theophilus, as he was called, stand out
in my memory as ones of almost unruffled happiness. The two great jars
of calomel and quinine on the mantelpiece became like faces of familiar,
beneficent friends; and the dusty bookcases, with their shining rows of
old English bindings, formed an appropriate background for the flight of
my wildest dreams. To this day those adolescent fancies have never
detached themselves from the little office, the scattered bricks of
which are now lying in the ruined garden between the blighted yew tree
and the uprooted box. I can see them still circling like vague faces
around the green lamp, under which Dr. Theophilus sits, with his brown
and white pointer, Robin, asleep at his feet. Sometimes there was a
saucer of fresh raspberry jam brought in by Mrs. Clay, the widowed
sister; sometimes a basket of winesap apples; and once a year, on the
night before Christmas, a large slice of fruit cake and a very small
tumbler of egg-nog. Always there were the cheery smile, the pleasant
talk, racy with anecdotes, and the wagging tail of Robin, the pointer.
"A good dog, Ben, this little mongrel of yours," the doctor would say,
as he stooped to pat Samuel's head; "but then, all dogs are good dogs.
You remember your Plutarch? Now, here's this Robin of mine. I wouldn't
take five hundred dollars in my hand for him to-night." At this Robin,
the pointer, would lift his big brown eyes, and slip his soft nose into
his master's hand. "I wouldn't take five hundred dollars down for him,"
Dr. Theophilus would repeat with emphasis.
On the nights when our teacher was called out to a patient, as he often
was, George Bolingbroke and I would push back the chairs for a game of
checkers, or step outside into the garden for a wrestling match, in
which I was always the victor. The physical proportions which the doctor
lamented, were, I believe, the strongest hold I had upon the admiration
of young George. Latin he treated with the same half-playful,
half-contemptuous courtesy that I had observed in General Bolingbroke's
manner to "the ladies," and even the doctor he regarded as a mixture of
a scholar and a mollycoddle. It was perfectly characteristic that one
thing, and one thing only, should command his unqualified respect, and
this was the possession of the potential power to knock him down.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH I GROW UP
In my eighteenth year, when I had achieved a position and a salary in
the tobacco factory, I left the Old Market forever, and moved into a
room, which Mrs. Clay had offered to rent to me, in the house of Dr.
Theophilus. During the next twelve months my intimacy with young George,
who was about to enter the University, led to an acquaintance, though a
slight one, with that great man, the General. As the years passed my
dream of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, instead of
evaporating, had become fixed in my mind as the fruition of all my toil,
the end of all my ambition. I saw in it still, as I had seen in it that
afternoon against the rosy sunset and the anchored vessel, the one
glorious possibility, the great adventure. The General's plethoric
figure, with his big paunch and his gouty toe, had never lost in my eyes
the legendary light in which I had enveloped it; and when George
suggested to me carelessly one spring afternoon that I should stop by
his house and have a look at his uncle's classical library, I felt my
cheeks burn, while my heart beat an excited tattoo against my ribs. The
house I knew by sight, a grave, low-browed mansion, with a fringe of
purple wistaria draping the long porch; and it was under a pendulous
shower of blossoms that we found the General seated with the evening
newspaper in his hand and his bandaged foot on a wicker stool. As we
entered the gate he was making a face over a glass of water, while he
complained fretfully to Dr. Theophilus, who sat in a rocking-chair, with
Robin, the pointer, stretched on a rug at his feet.
"I'll never get used to the taste of water, if I live to be a hundred,"
the great man was saying peevishly. "To save my soul I can't understand
why the Lord made anything so darn flat!"
A single lock of hair, growing just above the bald spot on his head,
stirred in the soft wind like a tuft of bleached grass, while his lower,
slightly protruding lip pursed itself into an angry and childish
expression. He was paying the inevitable price, I gathered, for his
career as "a gay old bird"; but even in the rebuking glance which Dr.
Theophilus now bent upon him, I read the recognition that the president
of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad must be dosed more
sparingly than other men. Under his loose, puffy chin he wore a loose,
puffy tie of a magenta shade, in the midst of which a single black pearl
reposed; and when he turned his head, the creases in his neck looked
like white cords sunk deep in the scarlet flesh.
"There's no use, Theophilus, I can't stand it," he protested. "Delilah,
bring me a sip of whiskey to put a taste in my mouth."
"No whiskey, Delilah, not a drop," commanded the doctor sternly. "It's
the result of your own imprudence, George, and you've got to pay for it.
You've been eating strawberries, and I told you not to touch one with a
ten-foot pole."
"You didn't say a word about strawberry shortcake," rejoined the
General, like a guilty child, "and this attack is due to an entirely
different cause. I dined at the Blands' on Sunday, and Miss Mitty gave
me mint sauce on my lamb. I never could abide mint sauce."
Taking out his prescription book the doctor wrote down a prescription in
a single word, which looked ominously like "calomel" from a distance.
"How did Miss Matoaca seem?" he asked, while Robin, the old pointer,
came and sniffed at my ankles, and I thought of Samuel, sleeping under a
flower bed in the doctor's garden. "She has a touch of malaria, and I
ordered her three grains of quinine every morning."
A purple flush mounted to the General's face, which, if I could have
read it by the light of history, would have explained the scornful
flattery in his attitude toward "the sex." It was easy to catch the
personal note in his piquant allusions to "the ladies," though an
instinct, which he would probably have called a principle, kept them
always within the bounds of politeness. Later I was to learn that Miss
Matoaca had been the most ardent, if by no means the only, romance of
his youth; and that because of some headstrong and indelicate opinions
of hers on the subject of masculine morals, she had, when confronted
with tangible proofs of the General's airy wanderings, hopelessly
severed the engagement within a few weeks of the marriage. To a gay
young bird the prospect of a storm in a nest had been far from
attractive; and after a fierce quarrel, he had started dizzily down the
descent of his bachelorhood, while she had folded her trembling wings
and retired into the shadow. That Miss Matoaca possessed "headstrong
opinions," even the doctor, with all his gallantry, would have been the
last to deny. "She seems to think men are made just like women," he
remarked now, wonderingly, "but, oh, Lord, they ain't!"
"I tell you it's those outlandish heathen notions of hers that are
driving us all crazy!" exclaimed the General, making a face as he had
done over his glass of water. "Talks about taxes without representation
exactly as if she were a man and had rights! What rights does a woman
want, anyway, I'd like to know, except the right to a husband? They all
ought to have husbands--God knows I'm not denying them that!--the state
ought to see to it. But rights! Pshaw! They'll get so presently they
won't know how to bear their wrongs with dignity. And I tell you,
doctor, if there's a more edifying sight than a woman bearing her wrongs
beautifully, I've never seen it. Why, I remember my Cousin Jenny
Tyler--you know she married that scamp who used to drink and throw his
boots at her. 'What do you do, Jenny?' I asked, in a boiling rage, when
she told me, and I never saw a woman look more like an angel than she
did when she answered, 'I pick them up.' Why, she made me cry, sir;
that's the sort of woman that makes a man want to marry."
"I dare say you're right," sighed the doctor, "but Miss Matoaca is made,
of a different stuff. I can't imagine her picking up any man's boots,
George."
"No more can I," retorted the General, "it serves her right that she
never got a husband. No gentleman wants to throw his boots at his wife,
but, by Jove, he likes to feel that if he were ever to do such a thing,
she'd be the kind that would pick them up. He doesn't want to think
everlastingly that he's got to walk a chalk-line or catch a flea in his
ear. Now, what do you suppose Miss Matoaca said to me on Sunday? We were
talking of Tom Frost's running for governor, and she said she hoped he
wouldn't be elected because he led an impure life. An impure life! Will
you tell me what business it is of an unmarried lady's whether a man
leads an impure life or not? It isn't ladylike--I'll be damned if it is!
I could see that Miss Mitty blushed for her. What's the world coming to,
I ask, when a maiden lady isn't ashamed to know that a man leads an
impure life?"
He raged softly, and I could see that Dr. Theophilus was growing sterner
over his flippancy.
"Well, you're a gay old bird, George," he remarked, "and I dare say you
think me something of a prude."
Tearing off a leaf from his prescription book, he laid it on the table,
and held out his hand. Then he stood for a minute with his eyes on
Robin, who was marching stiffly round a bed of red geraniums near the
gate. "It's time to go," he added; "that old dog of mine is getting
ready to root up your geraniums."
"You'd better keep a cat," observed the General, "they do less damage."
Young George and I, who had stood in the shadow of the wistaria awaiting
the doctor's departure, came forward now, and I made my awkward bow to
the General's bandaged foot.
"Any relative of Jack Starr?" he enquired affably as he shook my hand.
I towered so conspicuously above him, while I stood there with my hat in
my hand, that I was for a moment embarrassed by my mere physical
advantages.
"No, sir, not that I ever heard of," I answered.
"Then you ought to be thankful," he returned peevishly, "for the first
time I ever met the fellow he deliberately trod on my toe--deliberately,
sir. And now they're wanting to nominate him for governor--but I say
they shan't do it. I've no idea of allowing it. It's utterly out of the
question."
"Uncle George, I've brought Ben to see your library," interrupted young
George at my elbow.
"Library, eh? Are you going to be a lawyer?" demanded the General.
I shook my head.
"A preacher?" in a more reverent voice.
"No, sir, I'm in the Old Dominion Tobacco Works. You got me my first
job."
"I got you your job--did I? Then you're the young chap that discovered
that blend for smoking. I told Bob you ought to have a royalty on that.
Did he give it to you?"
"I'm to have ten per cent of the sales, sir. They've just begun."
"Well, hold on to it--it's a good blend. I tried it. And when you get
your ten per cent, put it into the Old South Chemical Company, if you
want to grow rich. It isn't everybody I'd give that tip to, but I like
the looks of you. How tall are you?"
"Six feet one in my stockings."
"Well, I wouldn't grow any more. You're all right, if you can only
manage to keep your hands and feet down. You've got good eyes and a good
jaw, and it's the jaw that tells the man. Now, that's the trouble with
that Jack Starr they want to nominate for governor. He lacks jaw. 'You
can't make a governor out of a fellow who hasn't jaw,' that's what I
said. And besides, he deliberately trod on my toe the first time I ever
met him. Didn't know it was gouty, eh? What right has he got, I asked,
to suppose that any gentleman's toe isn't gouty?"
His lower lip protruded angrily, and he sat staring into his glass of
water with an enquiring and sulky look. It is no small tribute to my
capacity for hero-worship to say that it survived even this nearer
approach to the gouty presence of my divinity. But the glamour of
success--the only glamour that shines without borrowed light in the
hard, dry atmosphere of the workaday world--still hung around him; and
his very dissipations--yes, even his fleshly frailties--reflected, for
the moment at least, a romantic interest. I began to wonder if certain
moral weaknesses were, indeed, the inevitable attributes of the great
man, and there shot into my mind, with a youthful folly of regret, the
memory of a drink I had declined that morning, and of a pretty maiden at
the Old Market whom I might have kissed and did not. Was the doctor's
teaching wrong, after all, and had his virtues made him a failure in
life, while the General's vices had but helped him to his success? I was
very young, and I had not yet reached the age when I could perceive the
expediency of the path of virtue unless in the end it bordered on
pleasant places. "The General is a bigger man than the doctor," I
thought, half angrily, "and yet the General will be a gay old bird as
long as the gout permits him to hobble." And it seemed to me suddenly
that the moral order, on which the doctor loved to dilate, had gone
topsy-turvy while I stood on the General's porch. As if reading my
thoughts the great man looked up at me, with his roguish twinkle.
"Now there's Theophilus!" he observed. "Whatever you are, sir, don't be
a damned mollycoddle."
Young George, plucking persistently at my sleeve, drew me at last out of
the presence and into the house, where I smelt the fragrance of
strawberries, freshly gathered.
"Here're the books," said George, leading me to the door of a long room,
filled with rosewood bookcases and family portraits of departed
Bolingbrokes. Then as I was about to cross the threshold, the sound of a
bright voice speaking to the General on the porch caused me to stop
short, and stand holding my breath in the hall.
"Good afternoon, General! You look as if you needed exercise."
"Exercise, indeed! Do you take me for your age, you minx?"
"Oh, come, General! You aren't old--you're lazy."
By this time George and I had edged nearer the porch, and even before he
breathed her name in a whisper, I knew in the instant that her sparkling
glance ran over me, that she was my little girl of the red shoes just
budding into womanhood. She was standing in a square patch of sunlight,
midway between the steps and a bed of red geraniums near the gate, and
her dress of some thin white material was blown closely against the
curves of her bosom and her rounded hips. Over her broad white forehead,
with its heavily arched black eyebrows, the mass of her pale brown hair
spread in the strong breeze and stood out like the wings of a bird in
flight, and this gave her whole, finely poised figure a swift and
expectant look, as of one who is swept forward by some radiant impulse.
Her face, too, had this same ardent expression; I saw it in her eyes,
which fixed me the next moment with her starry and friendly gaze; in her
very full red lips that broke the pure outline of her features; and in
her strong, square chin held always a little upward with a proud and
impatient carriage. So vivid was my first glimpse of her, that for a
single instant I wondered if the radiance in her figure was not produced
by some fleeting accident of light and shadow. When I knew her better I
learned that this quality of brightness belonged neither to the mind nor
to an edge of light, but to the face itself--to some peculiar mingling
of clear grey with intense darkness in her brow and eyes.
As she stood there chatting gayly with the General, young George eyed
her from the darkened hall with a glance in which I read, when I turned
to him, a touch of his uncle's playful masculine superiority.
"She'll be a stunner, if she doesn't get too big," he observed. "I don't
like big girls--do you?"
Then as I made no rejoinder, he added after a moment, "Do you think her
mouth spoils her? Aunt Hatty calls her mouth coarse."
"Coarse?" I echoed angrily. "What does she mean by coarse?"
"Oh, too red and too full. She says a lady's mouth ought to be a
delicate bow."
"I never saw a delicate bow--"
"No more did I--but I'd call Sally a regular stunner now, mouth and all.
Sally!" he broke out suddenly, and stepped out on the porch. "I'll go
riding with you some day," he said, "if you want me."
She laughed up at him. "But I don't want you."
"You wanted me bad enough a year ago."
"That was a year ago."
Running hurriedly down the steps, he stood talking to her beside the bed
of scarlet geraniums, while I felt a burning embarrassment pervade my
body to the very palms of my hands.
"Where's the other fellow, George?" called the General, suddenly.
"What's become of him?"
As he turned his head in my direction, I left the hall, and came out
upon the porch, acutely conscious, all the time, that there was too much
of me, that my hands and feet got in my way, that I ought to have put on
a different shirt in the afternoon.
Sally was stooping over to snip off the head of a geranium, and when she
looked up the next instant, with her hair blown back from her forehead,
her starry, expectant gaze rested full on my own.
"Why, it's the boy I used to know," she exclaimed, moving toward me.
"Boy, how do you do?" She put out her hand, and as I took it in mine, I
saw for the first time that she was a large girl for her age, and would
be a large woman. Her figure was already ripening under her thin white
gown, but her hands and feet were still those of a child, and moulded, I
saw, with that peculiar delicacy, which, I had learned from the doctor,
was the distinguishing characteristic of the Virginian aristocracy.
"It is a long time since--since I saw you," she remarked in a cordial
voice.
"It's been eight years," I answered. "I wonder that you remember me."
"Oh, I never forget. And besides, if I didn't see you for eight years
more, I should still recognise you by your eyes. There aren't many
boys," she said merrily, "who have eyes like a blue-eyed collie's."
With this she turned from me to George, and after a word or two to the
General, and a nod in my direction, they passed through the gate, and
went slowly along the street, her pale brown hair still blown like a
bird's wing behind her.
The General's sister, young George's Aunt Hatty, a severe little lady,
with a very flat figure, had come out on the porch, and was offering her
brother a dose of medicine.
"A good girl, Hatty," remarked the great man, in an affable mood. "A
little too much of her Aunt Matoaca's spirit for a wife, but a very good
girl, as long as you ain't married to her."
"She would be handsome, George, except for her mouth. It's a pity her
mouth spoils her."
"What's the matter with her mouth? I haven't got your eyesight, Hatty,
but it appears a perfectly good mouth to me."
"That's because you have naturally coarse tastes, George. A lady's mouth
should be a delicate bow."
A delicate bow, indeed! Those full, sensitive lips that showed like a
splash of carmine in the clear pallor of her face! As I walked home
under the broad, green leaves of the sycamores, I remembered the
features of the pretty maiden at the Old Market, and they appeared to me
suddenly divested of all beauty. It was as if a bright beam of sunshine
had fallen on a blaze of artificial light, and extinguished it forever.
Henceforth I should move straight toward a single love, as I had already
begun to move straight toward a single ambition.
CHAPTER XI
IN WHICH I ENTER SOCIETY AND GET A FALL
My first successful speculation was made in my twenty-first year with
five hundred dollars paid to me by Bob Brackett when the Nectar blend
had been six months on the market. By the General's advice I put the
money in the Old South Chemical Company, and selling out a little later
at high profits, I immediately reinvested. As the years went by, that
smoking mixture, discovered almost by accident in an idle moment, began
to yield me considerably larger checks twice a year; and twice a year,
with the General's enthusiastic assistance, I went in for a modest
speculation from which I hoped sometime to reap a fortune. When I was
twenty-five, a temporary depression in the market gave me the
opportunity which, as Dr. Theophilus had informed me almost daily for
ten years, "waits always around the corner for the man who walks
quickly." I put everything I owned into copper mining stock, then
selling very low, and a year later when the copper trade recovered
quickly and grew active, I rushed to the General and enquired
breathlessly if I must sell out.
"Hold on and await developments," he replied from his wicker chair over
his bandaged foot, "and remember that the successful speculator is the
man who always runs in the other direction from the crowd. When you see
people sitting still, you'd better get up, and when you see them begin
to get up, you'd better sit still. Fortune's a woman, you know; don't
try to flirt with her, but at the same time don't throw your boots at
her head."
Five years before I had left the tobacco factory to go into the
General's office, and my days were spent now, absorbed and alert, beside
the chair in which he sat, coolly playing his big game of chess, and
controlling a railroad. He was in his day the strongest financier in the
South, and he taught me my lesson. Tireless, sleepless, throbbing with a
fever that was like the fever of love, I studied at his side every
movement of the market, I weighed every word he uttered, I watched every
stroke of his stout cork-handled pen. An infallible judge of men, my
intimate knowledge soon taught me that it was by judging men, not
things, he had won his success. "Learn men, learn men, learn men," he
would repeat in one of his frequent losses of temper. "Everything rests
on a man, and the way to know the thing is to know the man."
"That's why I'm learning you, General," I once replied, as he hobbled
out of his office on my arm.
"Oh, I know, I know," he retorted with his sly chuckle. "You are letting
me lean on you now because you think the time will come when you can
throw me aside and stand up by yourself. It's age and youth, my boy, age
and youth."
He sighed wearily, and looking at him I saw for the first time that he
was growing old.
"Well, you've stood straight enough in your day, sir," I answered.
"Oh, I've had my youth, and I shan't begin to put on a long face because
I've lost it. I didn't have your stature, Ben, but I had a pretty fair
middling-size one of my own. They used to say of me that I had an eye
for the big chance, and that's a thing a man's got to be born with. To
see big you've got to be big, and that's what I like about you--you
ain't busy looking for specks."
"If I can only become as big a man as you, General, I shall be content."
"No, you won't, no, you won't, don't stop at me. Already they are
beginning to call you my 'wonderful boy,' you know. 'I like that
wonderful boy of yours, George,' Jessoms said to me only last night at
the club. You know Jessoms--don't you? He's president of the Union
Bank."
"Yes, I talked to him for two solid hours yesterday."
"He told me so, and I said to him: 'By Jove, you're right, Jessoms, and
that boy's got a future ahead of him if he doesn't swell.' Now that's
the Gospel truth, Ben, and all the body you've got ain't going to save
you if you don't keep your head. If you ever feel it beginning to swell,
you step outside and put it under a pump, that's the best thing I know
of. How old are you?"
"Twenty-six."
"And you've got fifty thousand dollars already?"
"Thanks to you, sir."
"So you ain't swelled yet. Well, I've given you six years of hard
training, and I made it all the blamed harder because I liked you.
You've got the look of success about you, I've seen enough of it to know
it. They used to say of me in Washington that I could sit in my office
chair and overlook a line of men and spot every last one of them that
was going to get on. I never went wrong but once, and that was because
the poor devil began to swell and thought he was as big as his own
shadow. But if the look's there, I see it--it's something in the eye and
the jaw, and the grip of the hands that nobody can give you except God
Almighty--and by George, it turns me into a downright heathen and makes
me believe in fate. When a man has that something in the eye and in the
jaw and in the grip of the hand, there ain't enough devils in the
universe to keep him from coming out on top at the last. He may go
under, but he won't stay under--no, sir, not if they pile all the
bu'sted stocks in the market on top his shoulders."
"Anyway, you've started me rolling, General, whether I spin on or come
to a dead stop."
"Then remember," he retorted slyly, as we parted,' "that my earnest
advice to a young man starting in business is--don't begin to swell!"
There was small danger of that, I thought, as I went on alone with my
vision of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad. From my
childhood I had seen the big road, as I saw it to-day, sweeping in a
bright track over the entire South, lengthening, branching, winding away
toward the distant horizon, girdling the cotton fields, the rice fields,
and the coal fields, like a protecting arm. One by one, I saw now, the
small adjunct lines, absorbed by the main system, until in the whole
South only the Great South Midland and Atlantic would be left. To
dominate that living organism, to control, in my turn, that splendid
liberator of a people's resources, this was still the inaccessible hope
upon which I had fixed my heart.
In my room I found young George Bolingbroke, who had been waiting, as he
at once informed me, "a good half an hour."
"I say, Ben," he broke out the next minute, "why don't you get the
housemaid to tie your cravats? She'd do it a long sight better. Are your
fingers all thumbs?"
"They must be," I replied with a humility I had never assumed before the
General, "I can't do the thing properly to save my life."
"I wonder it doesn't give you a common look," he remarked
dispassionately, while I winced at the word, "but somehow it only makes
you appear superior to such trifles, like a giant gazing over molehills
at a mountain. It's your size, I reckon, but you're the kind of chap who
can put on a turned-down collar with your evening clothes, or a tie
that's been twisted through a wringer, and not look ridiculous. It's the
rest of us that seem fops because we're properly dressed."
"I'd prefer to wear the right thing, you know," I returned, crestfallen.
"You never will. Anybody might as well expect a mountain to put forth
rose-bushes instead of pine. It suits you, somehow, like your hair,
which would make the rest of us look a regular guy. But I'm forgetting
my mission. I've brought you an invitation to a party."
"What on earth should I do at a party?"
"Look pleasant. Did I take you to Miss Lessie Bell's dancing class for
nothing? and were you put through the steps of the Highland Fling in
vain?"
"I wasn't put through, I never learned."
"Well, you kicked at it anyway. I say, is all your pirouetting to be
done with stocks? Are you going to pass away in ignorance of polite
society and the manners of the ladies?"
"When I make a fortune, perhaps--"
"Perhaps is always too late. To-morrow is better."
"Where is the party?"
"The Blands are giving it. Uncle George was puffing and blowing about
you when we dined there last Sunday, and Sally Mickleborough told me to
bring you to her party on Wednesday night."
Rising hurriedly I walked away from young George to the fireplace. A
mist was before my eyes, I smelt again the scent of wallflowers, and I
saw in a dream the old grey house, with its delicate lace curtains
parted from the small square window-panes as if a face looked out on the
crooked pavement.
"I'll go, George," I said, wheeling about, "if you'll pledge yourself
that I go properly dressed."
"Done," he responded, with his unfailing amiability. "I'll tie your
cravat myself; and thank your stars, Ben, that whatever you are, you
can't be little, for that's the unforgivable sin in Sally's eyes."
On Wednesday night he proved as good as his promise, and when nine
o'clock struck, it found me, in irreproachable evening clothes,
following him down Franklin Street, to the old house, where a softly
coloured light streamed through the windows and lay in a rosy pool under
the sycamores. All day I had been very nervous. At the moment when I was
reading telegrams for the General, I had suddenly remembered that I
possessed no gloves suitable to be worn at my first party, and I had
committed so many blunders that the great man had roared the word
"Swelled!" in a furious tone. Now, however, when the sound of a waltz,
played softly on stringed instruments, fell on my ears, my nervousness
departed as quickly as it had come. The big mahogany doors swung open
before us, and as I passed with George, into the brilliantly lighted
hall, where the perfume of roses filled the air, I managed to move, if
not with grace, at least with the necessary dignity of an invited guest.
The lamps, placed here and there amid feathery palm branches, glowed
under pink shades like enormous roses in full bloom, and up and down the
wide staircase, carpeted in white, a number of pretty girls tripped
under trailing garlands of Southern smilax. As we entered the door on
the right, I saw Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca, standing very erect in
their black brocades and old lace, with outstretched hands and
constantly smiling lips.
George presented me, with the slightly formal manner which seemed
appropriate to the occasion. I had held the little hand of each lady for
a minute in my own, and had looked once into each pair of brightly
shining eyes, when my glance, dropping from theirs, flew straight as a
bird to Sally Mickleborough, who stood talking animatedly to an elderly
gentleman with grey side-whiskers and a pleasant laugh. She was dressed
all in white, and her pale brown hair, which I had last seen flying like
the wing of a bird, was now braided and wound in a wreath about her
head. As the elderly gentleman bowed and passed on, she lifted her eyes,
and her starry, expectant gaze rested full on my face.
Between us there stretched an expanse of polished floor, in which the
pink-shaded lamps and the nodding roses were mirrored as in a pool.
Around us there was the music of stringed instruments, playing a waltz
softly; the sound, too, of many voices, now laughing, now whispering; of
Miss Mitty's repeated "It was so good of you to come"; of Miss Matoaca's
gently murmured "We are _so_ glad to have you with us"; of Dr.
Theophilus's "You grow younger every day, ladies. Will you dance
to-night?"; of General Bolingbroke's "I never missed an opportunity of
coming to you in my life, ma'am"; of a confused chorus of girlish
murmurs, of youthful merriment.
For one delirious instant it seemed to me that if I stepped on the
shining floor, I should go down as on a frozen pool. Then her look
summoned me, and as I drew nearer she held out her hand and stood
waiting. There was a white rose in her wreath of plaits, and when I bent
to speak to her the fragrance floated about me.
"Do you still remember me because of the blue-eyed collie?" I asked, for
it was all I could think of.
Her firm square chin was tilted a little upward, and as she smiled at
me, her thick black eyebrows were raised in the old childish expression
of charming archness. It was the face of an idea rather than the face of
a woman, and the power, the humour, the radiant energy in her look,
appeared to divide her, as by an immeasurable distance, from the pretty
girls of her own age among whom she stood. She seemed at once older and
younger than her companions--older by some deeper and sadder knowledge
of life, younger because of the peculiar buoyancy with which she moved
and spoke. As I looked at her mouth, very full, of an almost violent
red, and tremulous with expression, I remembered Miss Hatty's "delicate
bow" with an odd feeling of anger.
"It has been a long time, but I haven't forgotten you, Ben Starr," she
said.
"Do you remember the night of the storm and the cup of milk you wouldn't
drink?"
"How horrid I was! And the geranium you gave me?"
"And the churchyard and the red shoes and Samuel?"
"Poor Samuel. I can't have any dogs now. Aunt Mitty doesn't like them--"
Some one came up to speak to her, and while I bowed awkwardly and turned
away, I saw her gaze looking back at me from the roses and the
pink-shaded lamps. A touch on my arm brought the face of young George
between me and my ecstatic visions.
"I say, Ben, there's an awfully pretty girl over there I want you to
waltz with--Bessy Dandridge."
In spite of my protest he led me the next instant to a slim figure in
pink tarlatan, with a crown of azaleas, who sat in one corner between
two very stout ladies. As I approached, the stout ladies smiled at me
benignly, hiding suppressed yawns behind feather fans. Miss Dandridge
was, as George said, "awfully pretty," with large shallow eyes of pale
blue, an insipid mouth, and a shy little smile that looked as if she had
put it on with her crown of azaleas and would take it off again and lay
it away in her bureau drawer when the party was over.
"Get up and dance, dear," urged one of the stout ladies sleepily, "we
ought to have come earlier."
"The girls look very well," remarked the other, suddenly alert and
interested, "but I don't like this new fashion of wearing the hair.
Sally Mickleborough is handsome, though it's a pity she takes so much
after her father."
My arm was already around the pink tarlatan waist of my partner, the
crown of azaleas had brushed my shoulder like a gentle caress, and I had
whirled halfway down the room in triumphant agony, when a floating
phrase uttered in a girlish voice entered my ears and carried confusion
into my brain.
"Get out of the way. Doesn't Bessy look for all the world like a
rose-bush uprooted by a whirlwind?"
I caught the words as I went, and they proved too much for the trembling
balance of my self-confidence. My strained gaze, fixed on the glassy
surface beneath my feet, plunged suddenly downward amid the reflected
roses and lamps. The music went wild and out of tune on the air. My
blood beat violently in my pulses, I made a single false step, tripped
over a flounce of pink tarlatan, which seemed to shriek as I went down,
and the next instant my partner and I were flat on the polished floor,
clutching desperately for support at the mirrored roses beneath.
The wreck lasted only a minute. A single suppressed titter fell on my
ears, and was instantly checked. I looked up in time to see a smile
freeze on Miss Mitty's face, and melt immediately into an expression of
sympathy. The pretty girl, with the crown of azalea hanging awry on her
flaxen tresses, and her flounce of pink tarlatan held disconsolately in
her hand, looked for one dreadful instant as if she were about to burst
into tears. A few dancers had stopped and gathered sympathetically
around us, but the rest were happily whirling on, while the music, after
a piercing crescendo, came breathlessly to a pause amid a silence that I
felt to be far louder than sound. The perspiration, forced out by inward
agony, stood in drops on my forehead, and as I wiped it away, I said
almost defiantly:--
"It was the fault of George Bolingbroke. I told him I didn't know how to
dance."
"I think I'd better go home," murmured the heroine of the disaster,
catching her lower lip in her teeth to bite back a sob, "I wonder where
mamma can be?"
"Here, dear," responded a commiserating voice, and I was about to turn
away in disgrace without a further apology, when the little circle
around us divided with a flutter, and Sally appeared, leaning on the arm
of a youth with bulging eyes and a lantern jaw.
"Go home, Bessy? Why, how silly!" she exclaimed, and her energetic voice
seemed suddenly to dominate the situation. "It wasn't so many years ago,
I'm sure, that you used to tumble for the pleasure of it. Here, let me
pin on your crown, and then run straight upstairs to the red room and
get mammy to mend your flounce. It won't take her a minute. There, now,
you're all the prettier for a high colour."
When she had pushed Bessy across the threshold with her small, strong
hands, she turned to me, laughing a little, and slipped her arm into
mine with the air of a young queen bestowing a favour.
"It's just as well, Ben Starr," she said, "that you're engaged to me for
this dance, and not to a timid lady."
It wasn't my dance, I knew; in fact, I had not had sufficient boldness
to ask her for one, and I discovered the next minute, when she sent away
rather impatiently a youth who approached, that she had taken such
glorious possession merely from some indomitable instinct to give people
pleasure.
"Shall we sit down and talk a little over there under the smilax?" she
asked, "or would you rather dance? If you'd like to dance," she added
with a sparkle in her face, "I am not afraid."
"Well, I am," I retorted, "I shall never dance again."
"How serious that sounds--but since you've made the resolution I hope
you'll keep it. I like things to be kept."
"There's no chance of my breaking it. I never made but one other solemn
vow in my life."
"And you've kept that?"
"I am keeping it now."
She sat down, arranging her white draperies under the festoons of
smilax, her left hand, from which a big feather fan drooped, resting on
her knees, her small, white-slippered foot moving to the sound of the
waltz.
"Was it a vow not to grow any more?" she asked with a soft laugh.
"It was," I leaned toward her and the fragrance of the white rose,
drooping a little in her wreath of plaits, filled my nostrils, "that I
would not stay common."
Her lashes, which had been lowered, were raised suddenly, and I met her
eyes. "O Ben Starr, Ben Starr," she said, "how well you have kept it!"
"Do you remember the stormy night when you would not let me take your
wet cap because I was a common boy?".
"How hateful I must have been!"
"On that night I determined that I would not grow up to be a common man.
That was why I ran away, that was why I went into the tobacco factory,
that was why I started to learn Johnson's Dictionary by heart--why I
drudged over my Latin, why I went into stocks, why--"
Her eyes had not left my face, but unfurling the big feather fan, she
waved it slowly between us. I, who had, in the words of Dr. Theophilus,
"no small wits in my head," who could stand, dumb and a clown, in a
ballroom, who could even trip up my partner, had found words that could
arrest the gaze of the woman before me. To talk at all I must talk of
big things, and it was of big things that I now spoke--of poverty, of
struggle, of failure, of aspiration. My mind, like my body, was not
rounded to the lighter graces, the rippling surface, that society
requires. In my everyday clothes, among men, I was at no loss for words,
but the high collar and the correctly tied cravat I wore seemed to
strangle my throat, until those starry eyes, seeking big things also,
had looked into mine. Then I forgot my fruitless efforts at
conversation, I forgot the height of my collar, the stiffness of my
shirt, the size of my hands and my feet. I forgot that I was a plain
man, and remembered only that I was a man. The merely social, the
trivial, the commonplace, dropped from my thoughts. My dignity,--the
dignity that George Bolingbroke had called that of size,--was restored
to me; and beyond the rosy lights and the disturbing music, we stood a
man and a woman together. Our consciousness had left the surface of
life. We had become acutely aware of each other and aware, too, of the
silence in which our eyes wavered and met.
"That was why I starved and sweated and drudged and longed," I added,
while her fan waved with its large, slow movement between us, "that was
why--"
Her lips parted, she leaned slightly forward, and I saw in her face what
I had never seen in the face of a woman before--the bloom of a soul.
"And you've done this all your life?"
"Since that stormy evening."
"You have won--already you have won--"
"Not yet. I am beginning and I may win in the end if I keep steady, if I
don't lose my head. I shall win in the end--perhaps--"
"You will win what?"
"A fortune it may be, or it may be even the thing that has made the
fortune seem worth the having."
"And that is?" she asked simply.
"It is too long a story. Some day, if you will listen, I may tell you,
but not now--"
The dance stopped, she rose to her feet, and George Bolingbroke, rushing
excitedly to where we stood, claimed the coming Virginia reel as his
own.
"Some day you shall tell me the long story, Ben Starr," she said, as she
gave me her hand.
I watched her take her place in the Virginia reel, watched the dance
begin, watched her full, womanly figure, in its soft white draperies,
glide between the lines, with her head held high, her hand in George
Bolingbroke's, her white slippers skimming the polished floor. Then
turning away, I walked slowly down the length of the two drawing-rooms,
and said "Good-night" to Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca near the door. As I
passed into the hall, I heard a woman's voice murmur distinctly:--
"Yes, he is a magnificent animal, but he has no social manner."
CHAPTER XII
I WALK INTO THE COUNTRY AND MEET WITH AN ADVENTURE
My sleep that night was broken by dreams of roses and pink-shaded lamps.
For the first time in my life my brain and body alike refused rest, and
the one was illumined as by the rosy glow of a flame, while the other
was scorched by a fever which kept me tossing sleeplessly between Mrs.
Clay's lavender-scented sheets. At last when the sun rose, I got out of
bed, and hurriedly dressing, went up Franklin Street, and turned into
one of the straight country roads which led through bronzed levels of
broomsedge. Eastward the sun was ploughing a purple furrow across the
sky, and toward the south a single golden cloud hung over some thin
stretches of pine. The ghost of a moon, pale and watery, was riding low,
after a night of high frolic, and as the young dawn grew stronger, I
watched her melt gradually away like a face that one sees through smoke.
The October wind, blowing with a biting edge over the broomsedge, bent
the blood-red tops of the sumach like pointed flames toward the road.
For me a new light shone on the landscape--a light that seemed to have
its part in the high wind, in the waving broomsedge, and in the rising
sun. For the first time since those old days in the churchyard I felt
with every fibre of me, with every beat of my pulses, with every drop of
my blood, that it was good to be alive--that it was worth while every
bit of it. My starved boyhood, the drudgery in the tobacco factory, the
breathless nights in the Old Market, the hours when, leaning over
Johnson's Dictionary, I had been obliged to pinch myself to keep wide
awake--the squalor out of which I had come, and the future into which I
was going--all these were a part to-day of this strange new ecstasy that
sang in the wind and moved in the waving broomsedge.
And through it all ran my thoughts: "How fragrant the white rose was in
her hair! How tremulous her mouth! Are her eyes grey or green, and is it
only the heavy shadow of her lashes that makes them appear black at
times, as if they changed colour with her thoughts? Is it possible that
she could ever love me? If I make a fortune will that bring me any
nearer to her? Obscure as I am my cause is hopeless, but even if I were
rich and powerful, should I ever dare to ascend the steps of that house
where I had once delivered marketing at the kitchen door?"
The memory of the spring morning when I had first gone there with my
basket on my arm returned to me, and I saw myself again as a ragged,
barefooted boy resting beneath the silvery branches of the great
sycamore. Even then I had dreamed of her; all through my life the
thought of her had run like a thread of gold. I remembered her as she
had stood in our little kitchen on that stormy October evening, holding
her mop of a muff in her cold little hands, and looking back at me with
her sparkling defiant gaze. Then she came to me in her red shoes,
dancing over the coloured leaves in the churchyard, and a minute later,
as she had knelt in the box-bordered path patiently building her houses
of moss and stones. As a child she had stirred my imagination, as a
woman she had filled and possessed my thoughts. Always I had seen her a
little above, a little beyond, but still beckoning me on.
The next instant my thoughts dropped back to the evening before, and I
went over word for word every careless phrase she had spoken. Was she
merely kind to the boor in her house? or had there been a deeper meaning
in her divine smile--in her suddenly lifted eyes? "O Ben Starr, you have
won!" she had said, and had the thrill in her voice, the tremor of her
bosom under its fall of lace, meant that her heart was touched? Modest
or humble I had never been. The will to fight--the exaggerated
self-importance, the overweening pride of the strong man who has made
his way by buffeting obstacles, were all mine; and yet, walking there
that morning in the high wind between the rolling broomsedge and the
blood-red sumach, I was aware again of the boyish timidity with which I
had carried my market basket so many years ago to her kitchen doorstep.
She had said of me last night that I was no longer "common." Was that
because she had read in my glance that I had kept myself pure for her
sake?--that for her sake I had made myself strong to resist as well as
to achieve? Would Miss Mitty's or Miss Matoaca's verdict, I wondered,
have been as merciful, as large as hers? "A magnificent animal, but with
no social manner," the voice had said of me, and the words burned now,
hot with shame, in my memory. The recollection of my fall in the dance,
of the crying lips of the pretty girl in pink tarlatan, while she stood
holding her ruined flounce, became positive agony. What did she think of
my boorishness? Was I, for her also, merely a magnificent animal? Had
she noticed how ill at ease I felt in my evening clothes? O young Love,
young Love, your sharpest torments are not with arrows, but with pin
pricks!
A trailing blackberry vine, running like a crimson vein close to the
earth, caught my foot, and I stooped for a minute. When I looked up she
was standing clear against the reflected light of the sunrise, where a
low hill rose above the stretches of broomsedge. Her sorrel mare was
beside her, licking contentedly at a bright branch of sassafras; and I
saw that she had evidently dismounted but the moment before. As I
approached, she fastened her riding skirt above her high boots, and
kneeling down on the dusty roadside, lifted the mare's foot and examined
it with searching and anxious eyes. Her three-cornered riding hat had
slipped to her shoulders, where it was held by a broad black band of
elastic, and I saw her charming head, with its wreath of plaits, defined
against the golden cloud that hung above the thin stretch of pines. At
my back the full sunrise broke, and when she turned toward me, her gaze
was dazzled for a moment by the flood of light.
"Let me have a look," I said, as I reached her, "is the mare hurt?"
"She went lame a few minutes ago. There's a stone in her foot, but I
can't get it out."
"Perhaps I can."
Rising from her knees, she yielded me her place, and then stood looking
down on me while I removed the stone.
"She'll still limp, I fear, it was a bad one," I said as I finished.
Without replying, she turned from me and ran a few steps along the road,
calling, "Come, Dolly," in a caressing voice. The mare followed with
difficulty, flinching as she put her sore foot to the ground.
"See how it hurts her," she said, coming back to me. "I'll have to lead
her slowly--there's no other way."
"Why not ride at a walk?"
She shook her head. "My feet are better than a lame horse. It's not more
than two miles anyway."
"And you danced all night?"
I hung the reins over my arm and we turned together, facing the sunrise.
"Yes, but the way to rest is to run out-of-doors. Are you often up with
the dawn, too?"
"No, but I couldn't sleep. The music got into my head."
"Into mine also. But I often take a canter at sunrise. It is my hour."
"And this is your road?"
"Not always. I go different ways. This one I call the
road-to-what-might-have-been because it turns off just as it reaches a
glorious view."
"Then don't let's travel it. I'd rather go with you on the
road-to-what-is-to-be."
She looked at me steadily for a minute with arching brows. "I wonder why
they say of you that you have no social amenities?" she observed
mockingly.
"I haven't. That isn't an amenity, it is a fact. To save my life I
couldn't find a blessed thing to say last night to the little lady in
pink tarlatan whose dress I tore."
"Poor Bessy!" she laughed softly, "she vows she'll never waltz with you
again."
"She's perfectly safe to vow it."
"Oh, yes, I remember, and I hope you won't dance any more. Do you know,
I like you better out-of-doors."
"Out-of-doors?"
"Well, the broomsedge is becoming to you. It seems your natural
background somehow. Now it makes George Bolingbroke look frivolous."
"His natural background is the ballroom, and I'm not sure he hasn't the
best of it. I can't live always in the broomsedge."
"Oh, it isn't only the broomsedge, though that goes admirably with your
hair--it's the bigness, the space, the simplicity. You take up too much
room among lamps and palms, you trip on a waxed floor, and down goes
poor Bessy. But out here you are natural and at home. The sky sets off
your head--and it's really very fine if you only knew it. Out here, with
me, you are in your native element."
"Is that because you are my native element? Can you imagine poor Bessy
fitting into the picture?"
"To tell the truth I can't imagine poor Bessy fitting you at all. Her
native element is pink tarlatan."
"And yours?" I demanded.
"That you must find out for yourself." A smile played on her face like
an edge of light.
"The sunrise," I answered.
"Like you, I am sorry that I can't be always in my proper setting," she
replied.
"You are always. The sunrise never leaves you."
Her brows arched merrily, and I saw the tiny scar I had remembered from
childhood catch up the corner of her mouth with its provoking and
irresistible trick of expression.
"Do you mean to tell me that you learned these gallantries in Johnson's
Dictionary?" she enquired, "or have you taken other lessons from the
General besides those in speculations?"
I had got out of my starched shirt and my evening clothes, and the
timidity of the ballroom had no part in me under the open sky.
"Johnson's Dictionary wasn't my only teacher," I retorted, "nor was the
General. At ten years of age I could recite the prosiest speeches of Sir
Charles Grandison."
"Ah, that explains it. Well, I'm glad anyway you didn't learn it from
the General. He broke poor Aunt Matoaca's heart, you know."
"Then I hope he managed to break his own at the same time."
"He didn't. I don't believe he had a big enough one to break. Oh, yes,
I've always detested your great man, the General. They were engaged to
be married, you have heard, I suppose, and three weeks before the
wedding she found out some dreadful things about his life--and she
behaved then, as Dr. Theophilus used to say, 'like a gentleman of
honour.' He--he ought to have married another woman, but even after Aunt
Matoaca gave him up, he refused to do it--and this was what she never
got over. If he had behaved as dishonourably as that in business, no man
would have spoken to him, she said--and can you believe it?--she
declined to speak to him for twenty years, though she was desperately in
love with him all the time. She only began again when he got old and
gouty and humbled himself to her. In my heart of hearts I can't help
disliking him in spite of all his success, but I really believe that he
has never in his life cared for any woman except Aunt Matoaca. It's
because she's so perfectly honourable, I think--but, of course, it is
her terrible experience that has made her so--so extreme in her views."
"What are her views?"
"She calls them principles--but Aunt Mitty says, and I suppose she's
right, that it would have been more ladylike to have borne her wrongs in
silence instead of shrieking them aloud. For my part I think that,
however loud she shrieked, she couldn't shriek as loud as the General
has acted."
"I hope she isn't still in love with him?"
Her clear rippling laugh--the laugh of a free spirit--fluted over the
broomsedge. "Can you imagine it? One might quite as well be in love with
one's Thanksgiving turkey. No, she isn't in love with him now, but she's
in love with the idea that she used to be, and that's almost as bad. I
know it's her own past that makes her think all the time about the
wrongs of women. She wants to have them vote, and make the laws, and
have a voice in the government. Do you?"
"I never thought about it, but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't like my wife
to go to the polls," I answered.
Again she laughed. "It's funny, isn't it?--that when you ask a man
anything about women, he always begins to talk about his wife, even when
he hasn't got one?"
"That's because he's always hoping to have one, I suppose."
"Do you want one very badly?" she taunted.
"Dreadfully--the one I want."
"A real dream lady in pink tarlatan?"
"No, a living lady in a riding habit."
If I had thought to embarrass her by this flight of gallantry, my hope
was fruitless, for the arrow, splintered by her smile, fell harmlessly
to the dust of the road.
"An Amazon seems hardly the appropriate mate to Sir Charles Grandison,"
she retorted.
"Just now it was the General that I resembled."
"Oh, you out-generaled the General a mile back. Even he didn't attempt
to break the heart of Aunt Matoaca at their second meeting."
The candid merriment in her face had put me wholly at ease,--I who had
stood tongue-tied and blushing before the simpers of poor Bessy. Dare as
I might, I could bring no shadow of self-consciousness, no armour of
sex, into her sparkling eyes.
"And have I tried to break yours?" I asked bluntly.
"Have you? You know best. I am not familiar with Grandisonian tactics."
"I don't believe there's a man alive who could break your heart," I
said.
With her arm on the neck of the sorrel mare, she gave me back my glance,
straight and full, like a gallant boy.
"Nothing," she remarked blithely, "short of a hammer could do it."
We laughed together, and the laughter brought us into an intimacy which
to me, at least, was dangerously sweet. My head whirled suddenly.
"You asked me last night about the one thing I'd wanted most all my
life," I said.
"The thing that made you learn Johnson's Dictionary by heart?" she
asked.
"Only to the end of the _c_'s. Don't credit me, please, with the whole
alphabet."
"The thing, then," she corrected herself, "that made you learn the _a_,
_b_, _c_'s of Johnson's Dictionary by heart?"
"If you wish it I will tell you what it was."
For the first time her look wavered. "Is it very long? Here is Franklin
Street, and in a little while we shall be at home."
"It is not long--it is very short. It is a single word of three
letters."
"I thought you said it had covered every hour of your life?"
"Every hour of my life has been covered by a word of three letters."
"What an elastic word!"
"It is, for it has covered everything at which I looked--both the earth
and the sky."
"And the General and the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad?"
"Without that word the General and the railroad would have been
nothing."
"How very much obliged to it the poor General must be!"
"Will you hear it?" I asked, for when I was once started to the goal
there was no turning me by laughter.
She raised her eyes, which had been lowered, and looked at me long and
deeply--so long and deeply that it seemed as if she were seeking
something within myself of which even I was unconscious.
"Will you hear it?" I asked again.
Her gaze was still on mine. "What is the word?" she asked, almost in a
whisper.
At the instant I felt that I staked my whole future, and yet that it was
no longer in my power to hesitate or to draw back. "The word is--you," I
replied.
Her hand dropped from the mare's neck, where it had almost touched mine,
and I watched her mouth grow tremulous until the red of it showed in a
violent contrast to the clear pallor of her face. Then she turned her
head away from me toward the sun, and thoughtful and in silence, we
passed down Franklin Street to the old grey house.
CHAPTER XIII
IN WHICH I RUN AGAINST TRADITIONS
When we had delivered the mare to the coloured groom waiting on the
sidewalk, she turned to me for the first time since I had uttered my
daring word.
"You must come in to breakfast with us," she said, with a friendly and
careless smile, "Aunt Mitty will be disappointed if I return without
what she calls 'a cavalier.'"
The doubt occurred to me if Miss Mitty would consider me entitled to so
felicitous a phrase, but smothering it the next minute as best I could,
I followed Sally, not without trepidation, up the short flight of steps,
and into the wide hall, where the air was heavy with the perfume of
fading roses. Great silver bowls of them drooped now, with blighted
heads, amid the withered smilax, and the floor was strewn thickly with
petals, as if a strong wind had blown down the staircase. From the
dining room came a delicious aroma of coffee, and as we crossed the
threshold, I saw that the two ladies, in their lace morning caps, were
already seated at the round mahogany table. From behind the tall old
silver service, the grave oval face of Miss Mitty cast on me, as I
entered, a look in which a faint wonder was mingled with a pleasant
hereditary habit of welcome. A cover was already laid for the chance
comer, and as I took possession of it in response to her invitation, I
felt again that terrible shyness--that burning physical embarrassment of
the plain man in unfamiliar surroundings. So had I felt on the morning
when I had stood in the kitchen, with my basket on my arm, and declined
the plum cake for which my mouth watered. In the road with Sally I had
appeared to share, as she had said, something of the dignity of the
broomsedge and the open sky; here opposite to Miss Matoaca, with the
rich mahogany table and the vase of chrysanthemums between us, I seemed
ridiculously out of proportion to the surroundings amid which I sat,
speechless and awkward. Was it possible that any woman could look
beneath that mountain of shyness, and discern a self-confidence in large
matters that would some day make a greater man than the General?
"Cream and sugar?" enquired Miss Mitty, in a tone from which I knew she
had striven to banish the recognition that she addressed a social
inferior. Her pleasant smile seemed etched about her mouth, over the
expression of faint wonder which persisted beneath. I felt that her
racial breeding, like Miss Matoaca's, was battling against her
instinctive aversion, and at the same moment I knew that I ought to have
declined the invitation Sally had given. A sense of outrage--of
resentment--swelled hot and strong in my heart. What was this social
barrier--this aristocratic standard that could accept the General and
reject such men as I? If it had sprung back, strong and flexible as a
steel wire, before the man, would it still present its irresistible
strength against the power of money? In that instant I resolved that if
wealth alone could triumph over it, wealth should become the weapon of
my attack. Then my gaze met Sally's over the chrysanthemums, and the
thought in my brain shrank back suddenly abashed.
"Dolly got a stone in her foot, poor dear," she remarked to her aunts,
"and Ben Starr got it out. She limped all the way home."
At her playful use of my name, a glance flashed from Miss Mitty to Miss
Matoaca and back again across the high silver service.
"Then we are very grateful to Mr. Starr," replied Miss Mitty in a prim
voice. "Sister Matoaca and I were just agreeing that you ought not to be
allowed to ride alone outside the city."
"Perhaps we can arrange with Ben to go walking along the same road,"
responded Sally provokingly, "and I shouldn't be in need of a groom."
For the first time I raised my eyes. "I'll walk anywhere except along
the road-to-what-might-have-been," I said, and my voice was quite
steady.
Her glance dropped to her plate. Then she looked across the vase of
chrysanthemums into Miss Mitty's face.
"Ben and I used to play together, Aunt Mitty," she said, offering the
information as if it were the most pleasant fact in the world, "when I
lived on Church Hill."
A flush rose to Miss Mitty's cheeks, and passed the next instant, as if
by a wave of sympathy, into Miss Matoaca's.
"I hoped, Sally, that you had forgotten that part of your life,"
observed the elder lady stiffly.
"How can I forget it, Aunt Mitty? I was very happy over there."
"And are you not happy here, dear?" asked Miss Matoaca, hurt by the
words, and bending over, she smelt a spray of lilies-of-the-valley that
had lain beside her plate.
"Of course I am, Aunt Matoaca, but one doesn't forget. I met Ben first
when I was six years old. Mamma and I stopped at his house in a storm
one night on our way over to grandmama's. We were soaking wet, and they
were very kind and dried us and gave us hot things to drink, and his
mother wrapped me up in a shawl and sent me here with mamma. I shall
always remember how good they were, and how he broke off a red geranium
from his mother's plant and gave it to me."
As she told her story, Miss Mitty watched her attentively, the
expression of faint wonder in her eyes and her narrow eyebrows, and her
pleasant, rather pained smile etched delicately about her fine, thin
lips. Her long, oval face, suffused now by an unusual colour, rose above
the quaint old coffee urn, on which the Fairfax crest, belonging to her
mother's family, was engraved. If any passion could have been supposed
to rock that flat, virgin bosom, I should have said that it was moved by
a passion of wounded pride.
"Is your coffee right, Mr. Starr? Have you cream enough?" she enquired
politely. "Selim, give Mr. Starr a partridge."
My coffee was right, and I declined the bird, which would have stuck in
my throat. The united pride of the Blands and the Fairfaxes, I told
myself, could not equal that possessed by a single obscure son of a
stone-cutter.
"If you are as hungry as I am, you are famished," observed Sally, with a
gallant effort to make a semblance of gayety sport on a frozen
atmosphere. "Aunt Matoaca, have pity and give me a muffin."
Muffins were passed by Miss Matoaca; waffles were presented immediately
by Selim.
"Do take a hot one," urged Miss Matoaca anxiously, "yours is quite
cold."
I took a hot one, and after placing it on the small white and gold
plate, swore desperately to myself that I would not eat a mouthful in
that house until I could eat there as an equal. The faint wonder beneath
the pained fixed smile on Miss Mitty's face stabbed me like a knife. All
her anxious hospitality, all her offers of cream and partridges, could
not for a single minute efface it. Turning my head I discerned the same
expression, still fainter, still gentler, reflected on Miss Matoaca's
lips--as if some subtle bond of sympathy between them were asking
always, beneath the hereditary courtesy: "Can this be possible? Are we,
whose mother was a Fairfax, whose father was a Bland, sitting at our own
table with a man who is not a gentleman by birth?--who has even brought
a market basket to our kitchen door? What has become of the established
order if such a thing as this can happen to two unprotected Virginia
ladies?"
And it was quite characteristic of their race, of their class, that the
greater the wonder grew in their gentle minds, the more sedulously they
plied me with coffee and partridges and preserves--that the more their
souls abhorred me, the more lavish became their hands. Divided as they
were by their principles, something stronger than a principle now held
the sisters together, and this was a passionate belief in the integrity
of their race.
Again Selim handed the waffles in a frozen silence, and again Sally made
an unsuccessful attempt to produce an appearance of animation.
"Are you going to market, Aunt Matoaca?" she asked, "and will you
remember to buy seed for my canary?"
The flush in Miss Matoaca's cheek this time, I could not explain.
"Sister Mitty will go," she replied, in confusion, "I--I have another
engagement."
"She alludes to a meeting of one of her boards," observed Miss Mitty,
and turning to me she added, with what I felt to be an unfair thrust at
the shrinking bosom of Miss Matoaca, "My sister is a great reader, Mr.
Starr, and she has drawn many of her opinions out of books instead of
from life."
I looked up, my eyes met Miss Matoaca's, and I remembered her love
story.
"We all do that, I suppose," I answered. "Even when we get them from
life, haven't most of them had their beginning in books?"
"I am not a great reader myself," remarked Miss Mitty, a trifle primly.
"My father used to say that when a lady had read a chapter of her Bible
in the morning, and consulted her cook-book, she had done as much
literary work as was good for her. Too intimate an acquaintance with
books, he always said, was apt to unsettle the views, and the best
judgment a woman can have, I am sure, is the opinion of the gentlemen of
her family."
"That may be true," I admitted, and my self-possession returned to me,
until a certain masculine assurance sounded in my voice, "but I'm quite
sure I shouldn't like anybody else's opinion to decide mine."
"You are a man," rejoined Miss Mitty, and I felt that she had not been
able to bring her truthful lips to utter the word "gentleman." "It is
natural that you should have independent ideas, but, as far as I am
concerned, I am perfectly content to think as my grandmother and my
great-grandmother have thought before me. Indeed, it seems to me almost
disrespectful to differ from them."
"And it was dear great-grandmama," laughed Sally, "who when the doctor
once enquired if her tooth ached, turned to great-grandpapa and asked,
'Does it ache, Bolivar?'"
She had tossed her riding hat aside, and a single loosened wave of her
hair had fallen low on her forehead above her arched black eyebrows.
Beneath it her eyes, very wide and bright, held a puzzled yet resolute
look, as if they were fixed upon an obstacle which frightened her, and
which she was determined to overcome.
"You are speaking of my grandmama, Sally," observed Miss Mitty, and I
could see that the levity of the girl had wounded her.
"I'm sorry, dear Aunt Mitty, she was my great-grandmama, too, but that
doesn't keep me from thinking her a very silly person."
"A silly person? Your own great-grandmama, Sally!" Her mind, long and
narrow, like her face, had never diverged, I felt, from the straight
line of descent.
"My sister and I unfortunately do not agree in our principles, Mr.
Starr," said Miss Matoaca, breaking her strained silence suddenly in a
high voice, and with an energy that left tremors in her thin, delicate
figure. "Indeed, I believe that I hold views which are opposed generally
by Virginia ladies--but I feel it to be a point of honour that I should
let them be known." She paused breathlessly, having delivered herself
of the heresy that worked in her bosom, and a moment later she sat
trembling from head to foot with her eyes on her plate. Poor little
gallant lady, I thought, did she remember the time when at the call of
that same word "honour," she had thrown away, not only her peace, but
her happiness?
"Whatever your opinions may be, Miss Matoaca, I respect your honest and
loyal support of them," I said.
The embarrassment that had overwhelmed me five minutes before had
vanished utterly. At the first chance to declare myself--to contend, not
merely with a manner, but with a situation, I felt the full strength of
my manhood. The General himself could not have uttered his piquant
pleasantries in a blither tone than I did my impulsive defence of the
right of private judgment. Miss Mitty raised her eyes to mine, and Miss
Matoaca did likewise. Over me their looks clashed, and I saw at once
that it was the relentless warfare between individual temperament and
racial instinct. In spite of the obscurity of my birth, I knew that in
Miss Matoaca, at that instant, I had won a friend.
"Surely Aunt Matoaca is right to express what she thinks," said Sally,
loyally following my lead.
"No woman of our family has ever thought such things, Sally, or has ever
felt called upon to express her views in the presence of men."
"Well, I suppose, some woman has got to begin some day, and it may as
well be Aunt Matoaca."
"There is no reason why any woman should begin. Your great-grandmama did
not."
"But my great-grandmama couldn't tell when her tooth ached, and you can,
I've heard you do it. It was very disrespectful of you, dear Auntie."
"If you cannot be serious, Sally, I refuse to discuss the subject."
"But how can anybody be serious, Aunt Mitty, about a person who didn't
know when her own tooth ached?"
"Dear sister," remarked Miss Matoaca, in a voice of gentle obstinacy, "I
do not wish to be the cause of a disagreement between Sally and
yourself. Any question that was not one of principle I should gladly
give up. I know you are not much of a reader, but if you would only
glance at an article in the last _Fortnightly Review_ on the
Emancipation of Women--"
"I should have thought, sister Matoaca, that Dr. Peterson's last sermon
in St. Paul's on the feminine sphere would have been a far safer guide
for you. His text, Mr. Starr," she added, turning to me, "was, 'She
looketh well to the ways of her household.'"
"At least you can't accuse Aunt Matoaca of neglecting the ways of her
household," said Sally, merrily, "even the General rises up after dinner
and praises her mince pies. Do you like mince pies, Ben?"
I replied that I was sure that I should like Miss Matoaca's, for I had
heard them lauded by General Bolingbroke; at which the poor lady blushed
until her cheeks looked like withered rose leaves. She was one of those
unhappy women, I had learned during breakfast, who suffered from a
greater mental activity than was usually allotted to the females of
their generation. Behind that long and narrow face, with its pencilled
eyebrows, its fine, straight nose, and restlessly shining eyes, what
battles of conviction against tradition must have waged. Was the final
triumph of intellect due, in reality, to the accident of an unhappy
love? Had the General's frailties driven this shy little lady, with her
devotion to law and order, and her excellent mince pies, into a martyr
for the rights of sex?
"I am told that Mrs. Clay prides herself upon her pies," she remarked.
"I have never eaten them, but Dr. Theophilus tells me that he prefers
mine because I use less suet."
"I am sure nobody's could compare with yours, sister Matoaca," observed
Miss Mitty in an affable tone, "and I happen to know that Mrs. Clay
resorts to Mrs. Camberwell's cook-book. _We_ prefer Mrs. Randolph's,"
she added, turning to me.
"Well, we'll ask Ben to dinner some day, and he may judge," said Sally.
Instantly I felt that her words were a challenge, and the shining
mahogany table, with its delicate lace mats, its silver and its
chrysanthemums, became a battle-field for opposing spirits. I saw Miss
Mitty stiffen and the corners of her mouth grow rigid under her
pleasant, fixed smile.
"Will you have some marmalade, Mr. Starr?" she asked, and I knew that
with the phrase, she had flung down her gauntlet on the table. Her very
politeness veiled a purpose, not of iron, but finely tempered and
resistless as a blade. Had she said to me: "Sir, you are an upstart, and
I, sitting quietly at the same table with you, and inviting you to eat
of the same dish of marmalade, am a descendant of the Blands and the
Fairfaxes,"--her words would have stabbed me less deeply than did the
pathetic "Can this be possible?" of her smiling features.
A canary, swinging in a gilt cage between the curtains at the window,
broke suddenly into a jubilant fluting; and rising from the table, we
stood for a minute, as if petrified, with our eyes on the bird, and on
the box of blossoming sweet alyssum upon the sill. A little later, when
I left with the plea that the General expected me at nine o'clock, the
two elder ladies gave me their small, transparent hands, while their
polite farewell sounded as final as if it had been uttered on the edge
of an open grave. Only Sally, smiling up at me, with that puzzled yet
determined look still in her eyes, said gayly, "When you go walking at
sunrise, Ben, choose the road-to-what-might-have-been!"
CHAPTER XIV
IN WHICH I TEST MY STRENGTH
Her words rang in my ears while I went along the crooked pavement under
the burnished sycamore. As I met the General at the corner I was still
hearing them, and they prompted the speech that burst impulsively from
my lips.
"General, I've got to get rich quickly, and I'm finding a way."
"You'd better make sure first that your royal road doesn't end in a
ditch."
"I was talking to a man from West Virginia yesterday about buying out
the National Oil Company, and I dreamed of it all night. He wants me to
go in with him, and start a refining plant. If I can get special
privileges and rebates from the railroads to give us advantages, we may
make a big business of it."
"You may and you mayn't. Who's your man?"
"Sam Brackett. Bob's brother, you know."
"A mighty good fellow, and shrewd, too. But I'd think it over carefully,
if I were you."
I did think it over, and the result of my thoughts was, as I told the
General a fortnight later, the purchase of a refining plant near
Clarksburg, and the beginning of a lively war with the competitors in
the business.
"We're going to sweep the South, General, with the help of the
railroad," I said.
The great man, with his gouty foot in a felt slipper, sat gazing
meditatively over the words of a telegram, which had come on his private
wire.
"Midland stock is selling at 160," he said. "It's a big railroad, my
boy, and I've made it."
Even to-day, with the living presence of Sally still in my eyes, I was
filled again with the old unappeasable desire for the great railroad.
The woman and the road were distinct and yet blended in my thoughts.
At dinner-time, when the General hobbled to his buggy on my arm, I made
again the remark I had blurted out so inopportunely.
"General, I've been to West Virginia and started the plant, and we're
going to give Hail Columbia to our competitors."
He looked at me attentively, and a sly twinkle appeared in his little
watery grey eyes, which were sunk deep in the bluish and swollen
sockets.
"Do you feel yourself getting big, Ben?" he enquired, with a chuckle.
I shook my head. "Not yet, but it's a fair risk and a good chance to
make a big business."
"Well, you're right, I suppose, and if you ain't you'll find out before
long. What's luck, after all, but the thing that enables a man to see a
long way ahead?"
He settled himself under his fur rug, flicked the reins over the old
grey horse, and we drove slowly up Main Street behind a street car.
"I don't know about luck, General, but I'm going to win out if hard
pushing can do it."
"It can do 'most anything if you only push hard, enough. But you talk as
if you were in love, Ben, I've said the same thing a hundred times in my
day, I reckon."
I blushed furiously, and then turning my face from him, stared at a
group of children upon the sidewalk.
"Whom could I marry, General?" I asked. "You know well enough that a
woman in your class wouldn't marry a man in mine--unless--"
"Unless she were over head and heels in love with him," he chuckled.
"Unless he were a great man," I corrected.
"You mean a rich man, Ben? So your oil business is merely a little love
attention, after all."
"No, money has very little to do with it, and the woman I want to marry
wouldn't marry me for money. But it's the mettle that counts, and in
this age, given the position I've started from, how can a man prove his
mettle except by success?--and success does mean money. The president of
the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad is obliged to be a rich
man, isn't he?"
"So you're still after my job, eh? Is that why you've let me bully and
badger you for the last six years?"
"It was at the bottom of it," I answered honestly, for the gay old bird
liked downright speaking, and I knew it. "I'd rather have been your
confidential secretary for six years than general manager of traffic. I
was learning what I wanted to know."
"And what was that?"
"The way you did things. The way you handled men and bought and sold
stocks."
"You like the road, too, eh?"
"I like the road as long as it can be of use to me."
"And when it ceases to be you'll throw it over?"
"Yes, if it ever ceases to be I'll throw it over--honestly," I answered.
"Now that's the thing," he said, "remember always that in handling men
honesty is a big asset. I've always been honest, my boy, and it's helped
me when I needed it. Why, when I came in and got control of the road in
that slump after the war, I was able to reorganise it principally
because of the reputation for honesty I had earned. It was a long time
before it began to pay dividends, but nobody grumbled. They knew I was
doing my best--and that I was doing it fair and square, and to-day we
control nearly twenty thousand miles of road."
"Yes, honesty I've learned in your office, sir."
"Well, it's good training,--it's mighty good training, if I do say it
myself. You could have got with a darn bloater like Dick Horseley, and
he'd have worked your ruin. Now you never saw me lose my head, did you,
eh, Ben?"
I replied that I had not--not even when his private wire had ticked off
news of the last panic.
"Well, I never did," he said reflectively, "except with women. Take my
advice, Ben, and find a good sensible wife, even if she's in your own
class, and marry and settle down. It steadies a man, somehow. I'd be a
long ways happier to-day," he added, a little wistfully, "if I'd taken a
wife when I was young."
I thought of Miss Matoaca, with her bright brown eyes, her withered
roseleaf cheeks, and her sacrifice in the cause of honour.
"Whatever you are don't be an old bachelor," he pursued after a pause,
"it may be pleasant in the beginning, but I'll be blamed if it pays in
the end. Find a good sensible woman who hasn't any opinions of her own,
and you will be happy. But as you value your peace, don't go and fall in
love with a woman who has any heathenish ideas in her head. When a woman
once gets that maggot in her brain, she stops believing in gentleness
and self-sacrifice, and by George, she ceases to be a woman. Every man
knows there's got to be a lot of sacrifice in marriage, and he likes to
feel that he's marrying a woman who is fully capable of making it. A
strong-minded woman can't--she's gone and unsexed herself--and instead
of taking pleasure in giving up, she begins to talk everlastingly about
her 'honour.' Pshaw! the next thing she'll expect to be treated as
punctiliously as if she were a business partner!"
The old wound still ached sometimes, it was easy to see; and because of
his age and his growing infirmities, he found it harder to keep back the
querulous complaints that rose to his lips.
"Now, there's that George of mine," he resumed, still fretting, "he's
probably gone and set his eyes on Sally Mickleborough, and it's as plain
as daylight that she's got a plenty of that outlandish spirit of her
aunt's. I don't mean she's got her notions--I ain't saying any harm of
the girl--she's handsome enough in spite of Hatty's nonsense about her
mouth--and I call it downright scandalous of Edmund Bland to leave every
last penny of his money away from her. But, mark my words, and I tell
George so every single day I live, if she marries George he's going to
have trouble as sure as shot. She's just the kind to expect him to make
sacrifices, and by Jove, no man wants to be expected to make sacrifices
in his own home!"
Sacrifices! My blood sang in my ears. If she would only marry me I'd
promise to make a sacrifice for her every blessed minute that I lived.
"And do you think she likes George, General?" I asked timidly.
"Oh, I don't suppose she knows her own mind," he retorted. "I never in
my life, sir, knew but one woman who did."
We drove on for a minute in silence, and from the red and watery look in
the General's eyes, I inferred that, in spite of his broken engagement
and his bitter judgment, Miss Matoaca had managed to retain her place in
his memory. As I looked at him, sitting there like a wounded eagle,
huddled under his fur rug, a feeling of thanksgiving that was almost one
of rapture swelled in my heart. If I had a plain name, I had also a
clean life to offer the woman I loved. When I remembered the strong,
pure line of her features, her broad, intelligent brow, her clear,
unswerving gaze, I told myself that whatever the world had to say, she,
at least, would consider the difference a fair one. At the great moment
she would choose me, I knew, for myself alone; choose in a democracy the
man who, God helping him, would stand always for the best in the
democratic spirit--for courage and truth and strength and a clean honour
toward men and women.
"Who was that pretty girl, Ben," the General enquired presently, "I saw
you walking with last Sunday? A sweetheart?"
"No, sir. My sister."
"A lady? She looked it."
"She has been taught like one."
"What'll you do with her? Marry her off?"
"I haven't thought--but she won't look at any of the men she knows."
"Oh, well, if the National Oil wins, you may give her a fortune. There
are plenty of young chaps who would jump at her. Bless my soul, she's
more to my taste than Sally Mickleborough. It's the women who are such
fools about birth, you know, men don't care a rap. Why, if I'd loved a
woman, she might have been born in the poorhouse for all the thought I'd
have given it. A pretty face or a small foot goes a long sight farther
with a man than the tallest grandfather that ever lived." For a moment
he was silent, and then he spoke softly, unconscious that he uttered his
thought aloud. "No, Matoaca's birth, whatever it might have been,
couldn't have come between us--it was her damned principles."
He looked tired and old, now that his armour of business had dropped
from him, as he sat there, with the fur rug drawn over his chest, and
his loose lower lip hanging slightly away from his shrunken gums. A
sudden pity, the first I had ever dared feel for the president of the
Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, shot through my heart. The
gay old bird, I told myself, was shedding his plumage at last.
"Well, as long as I can't rest on my birth, I might as well stand up on
something," I said.
"Women think a lot of it," he resumed, as if he had not noticed my
flippant interjection; "and I reckon it about fits the size of their
minds. Why, to hear Miss Mitty Bland talk you would think good birth was
the only virtue she admitted to the first rank. I was telling her about
you," he added with a chuckle, "and you've got sense enough to see the
humour of what she said."
"I hope I have, General."
"Well, I began it by boasting about your looks, Ben, if you don't mind.
'That wonderful boy of ours is the finest-looking fellow in the South
to-day, Miss Mitty,' I burst out, 'and he stands six feet two in his
stockings.' 'Ah, General,' she replied sadly, 'what are six feet two
inches without a grandfather?'"
He threw back his head with a roar, appearing a trifle chagrined the
next instant by my faint-hearted pretence of mirth.
"Doesn't it tickle you, Ben?" he enquired, checking his laughter.
"I'm afraid it makes me rather angry, General," I answered.
"Oh, well, I didn't think you'd take it seriously. It's just a joke, you
know. Go ahead and make your fortune, and they'll receive you quick
enough."
"But they have received me. They asked me to their party."
"That was Sally, my boy--it was her party, and she fought the ladies for
you. That girl's a born fighter, and I reckon she gets it from Harry
Mickleborough--for the only blessed thing he could do was to fight. He
was a mighty poor man, was Harry, but a God Almighty soldier--and he
sent more Yankees to glory than any single man in the whole South. The
girl gets it from him, and she hasn't any of her aunts' aristocratic
nonsense in her either. She told Miss Mitty, on the spot, and I can see
her eyes shine now, that she liked you and she meant to know you."
"That she meant to know me," I repeated, with a singing heart.
"The ladies were put out, I could see, but they ain't a match for that
scamp Harry, and he's in her. There never lived the general that could
command him, and he'd have been shot for insubordination in '63 if he
hadn't been as good as a whole company to the army. 'I'll fight for the
South and welcome,' he used to say, 'but, by God, sir, I'll fight as I
damn please.' 'Twas the same way about the church, too. Old Dr. Peterson
got after him once about standing, instead of kneeling, during prayers,
and 'I'll pray as I damn please, sir!' responded Harry. Oh, he was a sad
scamp!"
"So his daughter fought for me?" I said. "How did it end?"
"It will end all right when you are president of the Great South Midland
and Atlantic Railroad, and have shipped me to Kingdom Come. They won't
shut their doors in your face, then."
"But she stood up for me?" I asked, and my voice trembled.
"She? Do you mean Miss Matoaca? Well, she granted your good looks and
your virtues, but she regretted that they couldn't ask you to their
house."
"And Miss Mitty?"
"Oh, Miss Mitty assured me that six feet two were as an inch in her
sight, without a grandfather."
"But her niece--Miss Mickleborough?" I had worked delicately up to my
point.
"The girl fought for you--but then she's obliged to fight for
something?--it's Harry in her. That's why, as I said to George at
breakfast, I don't want him to marry her. She's a good girl, and I like
her, but who in the deuce wants to marry a fighting wife? Look at that
fellow mauling his horse, Ben. It makes me sick to see 'em do it, but
it's no business of mine, I reckon."
"It is of mine, General," I replied, for the sight of an ill-treated
animal had made my blood boil since childhood. Before he could answer, I
had jumped over the moving wheel, and had reached the miserable,
sore-backed horse struggling under a load of coal and a big stick.
"Come off and put your shoulder to the wheel, you drunken brute," I
said, as my rage rose in my throat.
"I'll be damned if I will," replied the fellow, and he was about to
begin belabouring again, when I seized him by the collar and swung him
clear to the street.
"I'll be damned if you don't," I retorted.
I was a strong man, and when my passions were roused, the thought of my
own strength slipped from consciousness.
"You'll break his bones, Ben," said the General, leaning out of his
buggy, but his eyes shone as they might have shone at the sight of his
first battle.
"I hope I shall," I responded grimly, and going over to the wagon I put
my shoulder to the wheel, and began the ascent of the steep hill.
Somebody on the pavement came to my help on the other side, and we went
up slowly, with a half-drunken driver reeling at our sides and the
General following, in his buggy, a short way behind.
"I thought you were a diffident fellow, Ben," remarked the great man, as
I took my seat again by his side; "but I don't believe there's another
man in Richmond that would make such a spectacle of himself."
"I forget myself when I'm worked up," I answered, "and I forget that
anybody is looking."
"Well, somebody was," he replied slyly. "You didn't see Miss Matoaca
Bland pass you in a carriage as you were pushing that wheel?"
"No, I didn't see anybody."
"She saw you--and so did Sally Mickleborough. Why, I'd have given
something pretty in my day to make a girl's eyes blaze like that."
A week later I swallowed my pride, with an effort, and called at the old
grey house at the hour of sunset. Selim, stepping softly, conducted me
into the dimly lighted drawing-room, where a cedar log burned, with a
delicious fragrance, on a pair of high brass andirons. The red glow,
half light, half shadow, flickered over the quaint tapestried furniture,
the white-painted woodwork, and the portraits of departed Blands and
Fairfaxes that smiled gravely down, with averted eyes. In a massive gilt
frame over a rosewood spinet there was a picture of Miss Mitty and Miss
Mataoca, painted in fancy dress, with clasped hands, under a garland of
roses. My gaze was upon it, when the sound of a door opening quickly
somewhere in the rear came to my ears; and the next instant I heard Miss
Mitty's prim tones saying distinctly:--
"Tell Mr. Starr, Selim, that the ladies are not receiving."
There was a moment's silence, followed by a voice that brought my
delighted heart with a bound into my throat.
"Aunt Mitty, I _will_ see him."
"Sally, how can you receive a man who was not born a gentleman?"
"Aunt Mitty, if you don't let me see him here, I'll--I'll meet him in
the street."
The door shut sharply, there was a sound of rapid steps, and the voices
ceased. Harry Mickleborough, in his daughter, I judged, had gained the
victory; for an instant afterwards I heard her cross the hall, with a
defiant and energetic rustle of skirts. When she entered the room, and
held out her hand, I saw that she was dressed in her walking gown. There
were soft brown furs about her throat, and on her head she wore a small
fur hat, with a bunch of violets at one side, under a thin white veil.
"I was just going to walk," she said, breathing a little quickly, while
her eyes, very wide and bright, held that puzzled and resolute look I
remembered; "will you come with me?"
She turned at once to the door, as if eager to leave the house, and
while I followed her through the hall, and down the short flight of
steps to the pavement, I was conscious of a sharp presentiment that I
should never again cross that threshold.
CHAPTER XV
A MEETING IN THE ENCHANTED GARDEN
I spoke no word of love in that brisk walk up Franklin Street, and when
I remembered this a month afterwards, it seemed to me that I had let the
opportunity of a lifetime slip by. Since that afternoon I had not seen
Sally again--some fierce instinct held me back from entering the doors
that would have closed against me--and as the days passed, crowded with
work and cheered by the immediate success of the National Oil Company, I
felt that Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca, and even Sally, whom I loved, had
faded out of the actual world into a vague cloud-like horizon. To women
it is given, I suppose, to merge the ideal into everyday life, but with
men it is different. I saw Sally still every minute that I lived, but I
saw her as a star, set high above the common business world in which I
had my place--above the strain and stress of the General's office, above
the rise and fall of the stock market, above the brisk triumphant war
with competitors for the National Oil Company, above even the hope of
the future presidency of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad.
Between my love and its fulfilment, stretched, I knew, hard years of
struggle, but bred in me, bone and structure, the instinct of democracy
was still strong enough to support me in the hour of defeat. Never
once--not even when I sat, condescendingly plied with coffee and
partridges, face to face with the wonder expressed in Miss Mitty's eyes,
had I admitted to myself that I was obliged to remain in the class from
which I had sprung. Courage I had never lost for an instant; the present
might embarrass me, but the future, I felt always, I held securely
grasped in my own hands. The birthright of a Republic was mine as well
as the General's, and I knew that among a free people it was the mettle
of the man that would count in the struggle. In the fight between
democratic ideals and Old World institutions I had no fear, even to-day,
of what the future would bring. The right of a man to make his own
standing was all that I asked.
And yet the long waiting! As I walked one Sunday afternoon over to
Church Hill, after a visit to Jessy (who was living now with a friend of
the doctor's), I asked myself again and again if Sally had read my heart
that last afternoon and had seen in it the reason of my fierce reserve.
Jessy had been affectionate and very pretty--she was a cold, small,
blond woman, with a perfect face and the manner of an indifferent
child--but she had been unable to wean me from the thought which
returned to take royal possession as soon as the high pressure of my
working day was relaxed. It controlled me utterly from the moment I put
the question of the stock market aside; and it was driving me now, like
the ghost of an unhappy lover, back for a passionate hour in the
enchanted garden.
The house was half closed when I reached it, though the open shutters to
the upper windows led me to believe that some of the rooms, at least,
were tenanted. When I entered the gate and passed the stuccoed wing to
the rear piazza, I saw that the terraces were blotted and ruined as if
an invading army had tramped over them. The magnolias and laburnums,
with the exception of a few lonely trees, had already fallen; the
latticed arbours were slowly rotting away; and several hardy
rose-bushes, blooming bravely in the overgrown squares, were the only
survivals of the summer splendour that I remembered. Turning out of the
path, I plucked one of these gallant roses, and found it pale and
sickly, with a November blight at the heart. Only the great elms still
arched their bared branches unchanged against a red sunset; and now as
then the small yellow leaves fluttered slowly down, like wounded
butterflies, to the narrow walks.
I had left the upper terrace and had descended the sunken green steps,
when the dry rustle of leaves in the path fell on my ears, and turning a
fallen summer house, I saw Sally approaching me through the broken maze
of the box. A colour flamed in her face, and pausing in the leaf-strewn
path, she looked up at me with shining and happy eyes.
"It has been so long since I saw you," she said, with her hand
outstretched.
I took her hand, and turning we moved down the walk while I still held
it in mine. Out of the blur of her figure, which swam in a mist, I saw
only her shining and happy eyes.
"It has been a thousand years," I answered, "but I knew that they would
pass."
"That they would pass?" she repeated.
"That they must pass. I have worked for that end every minute since I
saw you. I have loved you, as you surely know," I blurted out, "every
instant of my life, but I knew that I could offer you nothing until I
could offer you something worthy of your acceptance."
Reaching out her hand, which she had withdrawn from mine, she caught
several drifting elm leaves in her open palm.
"And what," she asked slowly, "do you consider to be worthy of my
acceptance?"
"A name," I answered, "that you would be proud to bear. Not only the
love of a man's soul and body, but the soul and body themselves after
they have been tried and tested. Wealth, I know, would not count with
you, and I believe, birth would not, even though you are a Bland--but I
must have wealth, I must have honour, so that at least you will not
appear to stoop. I must give you all that it lies in my power to
achieve, or I must give you nothing."
"Wealth! honour!" she said, with a little laugh, "O Ben Starr! Ben
Starr!"
"So that, at least, you will not appear to stoop," I repeated.
"I stoop to you?" she responded, and again she laughed.
"You know that I love you?" I asked.
"Yes," she replied, and lifted her eyes to mine, "I know that you love
me."
"Beyond love I have nothing at the moment."
A light wind swept the leaves from her hand, and blew the ends of her
white veil against my breast.
"And suppose," she demanded in a clear voice, "that love was all that I
wanted?"
Her lashes did not tremble; but in her eyes, in her parted red lips, and
in her whole swift and expectant figure, there was something noble and
free, as if she were swept forward by the radiant purpose which shone in
her look.
"Not my love--not yet--my darling," I said.
At the word her blush came.
"You say you have only yourself to give," she went on with an effort.
"Is it possible that in the future--in any future--you could have more
than yourself?"
"Not more love, Sally, not more love."
"Then more of what?"
"Of things that other men and women count worth the having!"
The sparkle returned to her eyes, and I watched the old childish
archness play in her face.
"Do I understand that you are proposing to other men and women or to me,
sir?" she enquired, above her muff, in the prim tone of Miss Mitty.
"To neither the one nor the other," I answered stubbornly, though I
longed to kiss the mockery away from her curving lips. "When the time
comes I shall return to you."
"And you are doing this for the sake of other people, not for me," she
said. "I suppose, indeed, that it's Aunt Mitty and Aunt Matoaca you are
putting before me. They would be flattered, I am sure, if they could
only know of it--but they can't. As a matter of fact, they also put
something before me, so I don't appear to come first with anybody. Aunt
Mitty prefers her pride and Aunt Matoaca prefers her principles, and you
prefer both--"
"I am only twenty-six," I returned. "In five years--in ten at most--I
shall be far in the race--"
"And quite out of breath with the running," she observed, "by the time
you turn and come back for me."
"I don't dare ask you to wait for me."
"As a matter of fact," she responded serenely, "I don't think I shall. I
could never endure waiting."
Her calmness was like a dash of cold water into my face.
"Don't laugh at me whatever you do," I implored.
"I'm not laughing--it's far too serious," she retorted. "That scheme of
yours," she flashed out suddenly, "is worthy of the great brain of the
General."
"Now I'll stand anything but that!" I replied, and turned squarely on
her; "Sally, do you love me?"
"Love a man who puts both his pride and his principles before me?"
"If you don't love me--and, of course you can't--why do you torment me?"
"It isn't torment, it's education. When next you start to propose to the
lady of your choice, don't begin by telling her you are lovesick for the
good opinion of her maiden aunts."
"Sally, Sally!" I cried joyfully. My hand went out to hers, and then as
she turned away--my arm was about her, and the little fur hat with the
bunch of violets was on my breast.
"O, Ben Starr, were you born blind?" she said with a sob.
"Sally, am I mad or do you love me?" I asked, and the next instant,
bending over as she looked up, I kissed her parted lips.
For a minute she was silent, as if my kiss had drawn her strength
through her tremulous red mouth. Her body quivered and seemed to melt in
my arms--and then with a happy laugh, she yielded herself to my embrace.
"A little of both, Ben," she answered, "you are mad, I suppose, and so
am I--and I love you."
"But how could you? When did you begin?"
"I could because I would, and there was no beginning. I was born that
way."
"You meant you have cared for me, as I have for you--always?"
"Not always, perhaps--but--well, it started in the churchyard, I think,
when I gave you Samuel. Then when I met you again it might have been
just the way you look--for oh, Ben, did you ever discover that you are
splendid to look at?"
"A magnificent animal," I retorted.
She blushed, recognising the phrase. "To tell the truth, though, it
wasn't the way you look," she went on impulsively, "it was, I think,--I
am quite sure,--the time you pushed that wheel up the hill. I adored
you, Ben, at that moment. If you'd asked me to marry you on the spot I'd
have responded, 'Yes, thank you, sir,' as one of my great-grandmothers
did at the altar."
"And to think I didn't even know you were there. I'd forgotten it, but I
remember now the General told me I made a spectacle of myself."
"Well, I always liked a spectacle, it's in my blood. I like a man, too,
who does things as if he didn't care whether anybody was looking at him
or not--and that's you, Ben."
"It's not my business to shatter your ideals," I answered, and the next
minute, "O Sally, how is it to end?"
"That depends, doesn't it," she asked, "whether you want to marry me or
my maiden aunts?"
"Do you mean that you will marry me?"
"I mean, Ben, that if you aren't so obliging as to marry me, I'll pine
away and die a lovelorn death."
"Be serious, Sally."
"Could anything on earth be more serious than a lovelorn death?"
I would have caught her back to my breast, but eluding my arms, she
stood poised like the fleeting-spirit of gaiety in the little path.
"Will you promise to marry me, Ben Starr?" she asked.
"I'll promise anything on earth," I answered.
"Not to talk any more about my stooping to a giant?"
"I won't talk about it, darling, I'll let you do it."
"And if you're poor you'll let me be poor too? And if you're rich you'll
give me a share of the money?"
"Both--all."
"And you'll make a sacrifice for me--as the General said George
wouldn't--whenever I happen particularly to want one?"
"A million of them--anything, everything."
She came a step nearer, and raised her smiling lips to mine.
"Anything--everything, Ben, together," she said.
Presently we walked back slowly, hand in hand, through the maze of box.
"Will you tell your aunts, or shall I, Sally?" I asked.
"We'll go to them together."
"Now, at this instant?"
"Now--at this instant," she agreed, "but I thought you were so patient?"
"Patient? I'm as patient as an engine on the Great South Midland."
"A minute ago you were prepared to wait ten years."
"Oh, ten years!" I echoed, as I followed her out of the enchanted
garden.
At the corner the surrey was standing, and the face of old Shadrach, the
negro driver, stared back at me, transfixed with amazement.
"Whar you gwine now, Miss Sally?" he demanded defiantly of his young
mistress, as I took my place under the fur rug beside her.
"Home, Uncle Shadrach," she replied.
"Ain't I gwine drap de gent'man some whar on de way up?"
"No, Uncle Shadrach, home,"--and for home we started merrily with a
flick of the whip over the backs of the greys.
Sitting beside her for the first time in my life, I was conscious, as we
drove through the familiar streets, only of an acute physical delight in
her presence. As she turned toward me, her breath fanned my cheek, the
touch of her arm on mine was a rapture, and when the edge of her white
veil was blown into my face, I felt my blood rush to meet it. Never
before had I been so confident, so strong, so assured of the future. Not
the future alone, but the whole universe seemed to lie in the closed
palm of my hand. I knew that I was plain, that I was rough beside the
velvet softness of the woman who had promised to share my life; but this
plainness, this roughness, no longer troubled me since she had found in
it something of the power that had drawn her to me. My awkwardness had
dropped from me in the revelation of my strength which she had brought.
The odour of burning leaves floated up from the street, and I saw again
her red shoes dancing over the sunken graves in the churchyard. Oh,
those red shoes had danced into my life and would stay there forever!
CHAPTER XVI
IN WHICH SALLY SPEAKS HER MIND
We crossed the threshold, which I had thought never to pass again, and
entered the drawing-room, where a cedar log burned on the andirons. At
either end of the low brass fender, Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca sat very
erect, like two delicate silhouettes, the red light of the flames
shining through their fine, almost transparent profiles. Beyond them,
over the rosewood spinet, I saw their portrait, painted in fancy dress,
with clasped hands under a garland of roses.
As we entered the room, they rose slightly from their chairs, and turned
toward us with an expression of mild surprise on their faces. It was
impossible, I knew, for their delicately moulded features to express any
impulse more strongly.
"Dear aunties," began Sally, in a voice that was a caress, "I've brought
Ben back with me because I met him in the garden on Church
Hill--and--and--and he told me that he loved me."
"He told you that he loved you?" repeated Miss Mitty in a high voice,
while Miss Matoaca sat speechless, with her unnaturally bright eyes on
her niece's face.
Kneeling on the rug at their feet, Sally looked from one to the other
with an appealing and tender glance.
"You brought him back because he told you that he loved you?" said Miss
Mitty again, as if her closed mind had refused to admit the words she
had uttered.
"Well, only partly because of that, Aunt Mitty," replied Sally bravely,
"the rest was because--because I told him that I loved him."
For a moment there was a tense and unnatural silence in the midst of
which I heard the sharp crackling of the fire and smelt the faint sweet
smell of the burning cedar. The two aunts looked at each other over the
kneeling girl, and it seemed to me that the long, narrow faces had grown
suddenly pinched and old.
"I--I don't think we understood quite what you said, Sally dear," said
Miss Matoaca, in a hesitating voice; and I felt sorry for her as she
spoke--sorry for them both because the edifice of their beliefs and
traditions, reared so patiently through the centuries by dead Fairfaxes
and Blands, had crumbled about their ears.
"What she means, Miss Matoaca," I said gently, coming forward into the
firelight, "is that I have asked her to marry me."
"To marry you--you--Ben Starr?" exclaimed Miss Mitty abruptly, rising
from her chair, and then falling nervelessly back. "There is some
mistake--not that I doubt," she added courteously, the generations of
breeding overcoming her raw impulse of horror, "not that I doubt for a
minute that you are an estimable and deserving character--General
Bolingbroke tells me so and I trust his word. But Sally marry you! Why,
your father--I beg your pardon for reminding you of it--your father was
not even an educated man."
"No," I replied, "my father was not an educated man, but I am."
"That speaks very well for you, sir, I am sure--but how--how could my
niece marry a man who--I apologise again for alluding to your
origin--whose father was a stone-cutter--I have heard?"
"Yes, he was a stone-cutter, and I am sorry to say wasn't even a good
one."
"I don't know that good or bad makes a difference, except, of course, as
it affected his earning a livelihood. But the fact remains that he was a
common workman and that no member of our family on either side has ever
been even remotely connected with trade. Surely, you yourself, Mr.
Starr, must be aware that my niece and you are not in the same walk of
life. Do you not realise the impossibility of--of the connection you
speak of?"
"I realised it so much," I answered, "that until I met her this
afternoon I had determined to wait five--perhaps ten years before asking
her to become my wife."
"Ten years? But what can ten years have to do with it? Families are not
made in ten years, Mr. Starr, and how could that length of time alter
the fact that your father was a person of no education and that you
yourself are a self-made man?"
"I am not ashamed to offer her the man after he is made," I replied.
"What I did not think worthy of her was the man in the making."
"But it is the man in the making that I want," said Sally, rising to her
feet, and taking my hand in hers. "O Aunt Matoaca, I love him!"
The little lady to whom she appealed bent slowly forward in the
firelight, her face, which had grown old and wan, looking up at us, as
we stood there, hand in hand, on the rug.
"I am distressed for you, Sally," she said, "but when it becomes a
question of honour, love must be sacrificed."
"Honour!" cried Sally, and there was a passionate anger in her voice,
"but I _do_ honour him." My hand was in hers, and she stooped and kissed
it before turning to Miss Matoaca, who had drawn herself up, thin and
straight as a blade, in her chair.
"You are right," I said, "to tell me that I am unworthy of your
niece--for I am. I am plain and rough beside her, but, at least, I am
honest. What I offer her is a man's heart, and a man's hand that has
dealt cleanly and fairly with both men and women."
Until the words were uttered my pride had blinded me to my cruelty. Then
I saw two bright red spots appear in Miss Matoaca's thin cheeks, and I
asked myself in anger if the General or George Bolingbroke would have
been guilty of so deep a thrust? Did she dream that I knew her story?
And were those pathetic red spots the outward sign of a stab in her
gentle bosom?
"There are many different kinds of merit, Mr. Starr," she returned, with
a wistful dignity. "I do not undervalue that of character, but I do not
think that even a good character can atone for the absence of family
inheritance--of the qualities which come from refined birth and
breeding. We have had the misfortune in our family of one experience of
an ill-assorted and tragic marriage," she added.
"We must never forget poor Sarah's misery and ours, Sister Matoaca,"
remarked Miss Mitty, from the opposite side of the hearth; "and yet
Harry Mickleborough's father was a most respectable man, and the teacher
of Greek in a college."
All the pity went out of me, and I felt only a blind sense of irritation
at the artificial values, the feminine lack of grasp, the ignorance of
the true proportions of life. I grew suddenly hard, and something of
this hardness passed into my voice when I spoke.
"I stand or fall by own worth and by that alone," I returned, "and your
niece, if she marries me, will stand or fall as I do. I ask no favours,
no allowances, even from her."
Withdrawing her hand from mine, Sally took a single step forward, and
stood with her eyes on the faces that showed so starved and wan in the
firelight.
"Don't you see--oh, can't you see," she asked, "that it is because of
these very things that I love him? How can I separate his past from what
he is to-day? How can I say that I would have this or that
different--his birth, his childhood, his struggle--when all these have
helped to make him the man I love? Who else have I ever known that could
compare with him for a minute? You wanted me to marry George
Bolingbroke, but what has he ever done to prove what he was worth?"
"Sally, Sally," said Miss Mitty, sternly, "he had no need to prove it.
It was proved centuries before his birth. The Bolingbrokes proved
themselves to their king before this was a country--"
"Well, I'm not his king," rejoined Sally, scornfully, "so it wasn't
proved to me. I ask something more."
"More, Sally?"
"Yes, more, Aunt Mitty, a thousand times and ten thousand times. What do
I care for a dead arm that fought for a dead king? Both are dust to-day,
and I am alive. No, no, give me, not honour and loyalty that have been
dead five hundred years, but truth and courage that I can turn to
to-day,--not chivalric phrases that are mere empty sound, but honesty
and a strong arm that I can lean on."
Miss Matoaca's head had dropped as if from weariness over her thin
breast, which palpitated under the piece of old lace, like the breast of
a wounded bird. Then, as the girl stopped and caught her breath sharply
from sheer stress of feeling, the little lady looked up again and
straightened herself with a gesture of pride.
"Do not make the mistake, Sally," she said, "of thinking that a humble
birth means necessarily greater honesty than a high one. Generations of
refinement are the best material for character-building, and you might
as easily find the qualities you esteem in a gentleman of your own
social position."
"I might, Aunt Matoaca; but, as a matter of fact, have I? Until you have
seen a man fight can you know him? Is family tradition, after all, as
good a school as the hard world? A life like Ben's does not always make
a man good, I know, but it has made him so. If this were not true--if
any one could prove to me that he had been false or cruel to any living
creature--man, woman, or animal--I'd give him up to-day and not break my
heart--"
It was true, I knew it as she spoke, and I could have knelt to her.
"You are blind, Sally, blind and rash as your mother before you,"
returned Miss Mitty.
"No, Aunt Mitty, it is you who are blind--who see by the old values that
the world has long since outgrown--who think you can assign a place to a
man and say to him, 'You belong there and cannot come out of it.' But,
oh, Aunt Matoaca, surely you, who have sacrificed so much for what you
believe to be right,--who have placed principle before any claims of
blood, surely you will uphold me--"
"My child, my child," replied the poor lady, with a sob, "I placed
principle first, but never emotion--never emotion."
"Poor Sarah was the only one of us who gave up everything for the sake
of an emotion," added Miss Mitty, "and what did it bring her except
misery?"
Our cause was lost--we saw it at the same instant--and again Sally gave
me her hand and stood side by side with me in the firelight.
"I am sorry, dear aunts," she said gently, and turning to me, she added
slowly and clearly, "I will marry you a year from to-day, if you will
wait, Ben."
"I will wait for you, whether you marry me or not, forever," I answered;
and bowing silently, I turned and left the room, while Sally went down
again on her knees.
Once outside, I drew a long breath of air, sharp with the scent of the
sycamore, and stood gazing up at the clear sunset beyond the silvery
boughs. It was good to be out of those mouldering traditions, that
atmosphere of an all-enveloping past; good, too, to be out of the
tapestried room, away from the grave, fixed smiles of the dead Blands
and Fairfaxes and the close, sweet smell of the burning cedar. There I
dared not step with my full weight, lest I should ruthlessly tread on a
sentiment, or bring down a moth-eaten tradition upon my head. I was for
the hard, bright world, and the future; there in that cedar-scented
room, sat the two ladies, forever guarding the faded furniture and the
crumbling past. The pathetic contradiction of Miss Matoaca returned to
me, and I laughed aloud. Miss Matoaca, who worked for the emancipation
of women, while she herself was the slave of an ancestry of men who
oppressed women, and women who loved oppression! Miss Matoaca, whose
mind, long and narrow like her face, could grasp but a single idea and
reject the sequence to which it inevitably led! I wondered if she meant
to emancipate "ladies" merely, or if her principles could possibly
overleap her birthright of caste? Was she a gallant martyr to the
inequalities of sex, who still clung, trembling, to the inequalities of
society? She would go to the stake, I felt sure, for the cause of
womanhood, but she would go supported by the serene conviction that she
was "a lady." The pathos of it, and the mockery, checked the laugh in my
throat. To how many of us, after all, was it given to discern, not only
immediate effects, but universal relations as well? To the General? To
myself? What did we see except the possible opportunity, the room for
the ego, the adjustment to selfish ends? Yet our school was the world.
Should we, then, expect that little lady, with her bright eyes and her
withered roseleaf cheeks, to look farther than the scented firelight in
which she sat? I felt a tenderness for her, as I felt a tenderness for
all among whom Sally moved. The house in which she lived, the threshold
she had crossed, the servants who surrounded her, were all bathed for me
in the rosy light of her lamps. Common day did not shine there. I was
but twenty-seven, and my eyes could still find romance in the rustle of
her skirt and in the curl of her eyelash.
In the little office, where the curtains were drawn and the green-shaded
lamp already lit, I found Dr. Theophilus sitting over his evening mint
julep, the solitary dissipation in which I had ever seen him indulge.
His strong, ruddy face, with its hooked nose and illuminating smile, was
still the face of a middle-aged man, though he had passed, a year ago,
his seventieth birthday. At his feet, Waif, a stray dog, rescued in
memory of Robin, the pointer, was curled up on a rug.
"Well, my boy," he said cheerily, "you've had a good day, I hope?"
"A good day, doctor, I've been in heaven," I answered.
His smile shone out, clear and bright, as it did at a patient's bedside.
"I've been there, too, Ben," he responded, "forty years ago."
"Then why didn't you stay, sir?"
"Because it isn't given to any man to stay longer than a few minutes.
Ah, my boy, you are the mixture of a fighter and a dreamer."
"But suppose," I blushed, for I was a reserved man, though few people
were reserved with Dr. Theophilus, "suppose that your heaven is a
woman?"
"Has it ever been anything else to a man since Adam?" he asked. "Every
man's heaven, and most men's hell, is a woman, my boy. Why, look at old
George Bolingbroke now! He's no longer young, and he's certainly no
longer handsome, yet I've seen him, in his day, stand up straight and
tall in church at Miss Matoaca Bland's side, and look perfectly happy
because he could sing from the same hymn-book. Then a week later, when
she'd thrown him over, I saw him jump up at a supper, and drink
champagne out of the slipper of some variety actress."
"Yet she was right, I suppose, to throw him over?"
"Oh, she was right, I'm not questioning that she was right," he
responded hastily; "but it isn't always the woman who is right, Ben," he
added, "that makes a man's heaven."
"The poor little lady had no slipperful of champagne to fall back on," I
suggested.
"It's a pity she hadn't--for it's as true as the Gospel, that George
Bolingbroke drove her into all this nonsense about the equality of
sexes. Equality, indeed! A man doesn't want to make love to an equal,
but to an angel! Bless my soul, I don't know to save my life, what to
think of Miss Matoaca, except that she's crazy. That's the kindest thing
I can say for her. She's gone now and got into correspondence with some
bloodthirsty, fire-eating woman's rights advocates up North, and she's
actually taken to distributing their indecent pamphlets. She had the
face to leave one on my desk this morning. I'd just taken it in the
tongs before you came in and put it into the fire. There are the ashes
of it," he added sardonically, waving his silver goblet in the direction
of some grey shreds of paper in the fireplace.
"All the same, doctor, she may be crazy, but I respect her."
"Respect her? Respect Miss Matoaca Bland? Of course you respect her,
sir. Even George Bolingbroke, bitter as he is, respects her from his
boots up. She's the embodiment of honour, and if there's a man alive who
doesn't respect the embodiment of honour, be it male or female, he
ought--he ought to be taken out and horsewhipped, sir! Her own sister,
poor Miss Mitty, has the greatest veneration for her, though she can't
help lying awake at night and wondering where those crazy principles
will lead her next. If they lead her to a quagmire, she'll lift her
skirts and step in, Ben, there's no doubt of that--and what Miss Mitty
fears now is that, since she's got hold of these abolition sheets,
they'll lead her to the public platform--"
"You mean she'd get up and speak in public? She couldn't to save her
head."
"You'd better not conclude that Miss Matoaca can't do anything until
you've seen her try it," replied the doctor indignantly. "I suppose
you'd think she couldn't bombard a political meeting, with not a woman
to help her. Yet last winter she went down to the Legislature, in her
black silk dress and poke bonnet, and tried to get her obnoxious
measures brought before a committee."
"Was she laughed at?" I demanded angrily.
"Good Lord, no. They are gentlemen, even if they are politicians, and
they know a lady even if she's cracked."
"And is she entirely alone? Has she no supporter?"
"As far as I know, my boy, Matoaca Bland is the only blessed thing in
the state that cares a continental whether women are emancipated or
not."
He lifted the silver goblet to his lips, and drank long and deeply,
while the rustle of Mrs. Clay's skirts was heard at his office door.
After a sharp rap, she entered in her bustling way, and presented me
with a second julep, deliciously frosted and fragrant. She was a small,
very alert old lady, wearing a bottle-green alpaca, made so slender in
the waist that it caused her to resemble one of her own famous pickled
cucumbers.
"Theophilus," she began in a crisp, high voice, "I hope you have sent in
those bills, as you promised me?"
"Good Lord, Tina," responded the doctor, with a burst of irritation,
"isn't it bad enough to be sick without being made to pay for it?"
"You promised me, Theophilus."
"I promised you I'd send bills to the folks I'd cured, but, when I came
to think of it, how was I to know, Tina, that I'd cured any?"
"At least you dosed them?"
"Yes, I dosed them," he admitted; "but taking medicine isn't a pleasure
that I'd like to pay for."
Turning away, she rustled indignantly through the door, and Dr.
Theophilus, as he returned to the rim of his silver goblet, gave me a
sly wink over his sprigs of mint.
"Yes, Ben, it isn't always the woman who is right that makes a man's
heaven," he said.
CHAPTER XVII
IN WHICH MY FORTUNES RISE
The winter began with a heavy snow-storm and ended in a long April rain,
and in all those swiftly moving months I had seen Sally barely a dozen
times. Not only my pride, but Miss Mitty's rigid commands had kept me
from her house, and the girl had promised that for the first six months
she would not meet me except by chance.
"In the spring--oh, in the spring," she wrote, "I shall be free. My
promise was given and I could not recall it, but I believe now that it
was pride, not love, that made them exact it. Do you know, I sometimes
think that they do not love me at all. They have both told me that they
would rather see me dead than married, as they call it, beneath me.
Beneath me, indeed! Ah, dearest, dearest, how can one lower one's self
to a giant? When I think of all that you are, of all that you have made
yourself, I feel so humble and proud. The truth is, Ben, I'm not
suffering half so much from love as I am from indignation. If it keeps
up, some day I'll burst out like Aunt Matoaca, for I've got it in me.
And she of all people! Why, she goes about in her meek, sanctified
manner distributing pamphlets on the emancipation of woman, and yet she
actually told me the other day that, of course, she would prefer to have
only 'ladies' permitted to vote. 'In that case, however,' she added, 'I
should desire to restrict the franchise to gentlemen, also.' Did you
ever in your whole life hear of anything so absurd, and she really meant
it. She's a martyr, and filled with a holy zeal to get burned or racked.
But it's awful, every bit of it. Oh, lift me up, Ben! Lift me up!" And
in a postscript, "What does the General say to you? Aunt Mitty has told
the General."
The General had said nothing to me, but when I drove him up from his
office the next day, he invited me to dine with him, and talked
incessantly through the three simple courses about the prospects of the
National Oil Company.
"So you're sweeping the whole South?" he said.
"Yes, Sam has made a big thing of it. We've knocked out everybody else
in the oil business in this part of the world."
"Mark my word, then, you've been cutting into the interest of the oil
trust, and it will come along presently and try to knock you out. When
it does, Ben, make it pay, make it pay."
"Oh, I'll make it pay," I answered. "The consolidated interests may
sweep out the independent companies, but they can't overturn the Great
South Midland and Atlantic Railroad."
"It's the road, of course, that has made such a success possible."
"Yes, it's the road--everything is the road, General."
"And to think that when I got control of it, it was bankrupt."
Rising from the table he took my arm, and limped painfully into his
study, where he lit a cigar and sank back in his easy chair.
"Look here, Ben," he began suddenly, with a change of tone, "what's this
trouble brewing between you and Miss Mitty Bland?"
"There's no trouble, sir, except that her niece has promised to marry
me."
"Promised to marry you, eh? Sally Mickleborough? Are you sure it's Sally
Mickleborough?"
"I'm hardly likely to be mistaken, General, about the identity of my
future wife."
"No, I suppose you ain't," he admitted, "but, good Lord, Ben, how did
you make her do it?"
"I didn't make her. She was good enough to do it of her own accord."
"So she did it of her own accord? Well, confound you, boy, how did it
ever occur to you to ask her?"
"That's what I can't answer, General, I don't believe it ever occurred
to me any more than it occurred to me to fall in love with her."
"You've fallen in love with Sally Mickleborough, Miss Matoaca's niece.
She refused George, you know?"
I replied that I didn't know it, but I never supposed that she would
engage herself to two men at the same time.
"And she's seriously engaged to you?" he demanded, still unconvinced.
"Are you precious sure she isn't flirting? Girls will flirt, and I don't
reckon you've had much experience of 'em. Why, even Miss Mitty was known
to flirt in a prim, stiff-necked fashion in her time, and as for Sarah
Bland, they say she promised to marry a whole regiment before the battle
of Seven Pines. A little warning beforehand ain't going to do any harm,
Ben."
"I'm much obliged to you, General, but I don't think in this case it's
needed. Sally is staunch and true."
"Sally? Do you call her 'Sally'? It used to be the custom to address the
lady you were engaged to as 'Miss Sally' up to the day of the marriage."
I laughed and shook my head. "Oh, we move fast!"
"Yes, I'm an old man," he admitted sadly, "and I was brought up in a
different civilisation. It's funny, my boy, how many customs were swept
away with the institution of slavery."
"There'd have been little room for me in those days."
"Oh, you'd have got into some places quick enough, but you'd never have
crossed the Blands' threshold when they lived down on James River. There
isn't much of that nonsense left now, but Miss Mitty has got it and
Theophilus has got it; and, when all's said, they, might have something
considerably worse. Why, look at Miss Matoaca. When I first saw her
you'd never have imagined there was an idea inside her head."
"I can understand that she must have been very pretty."
"Pretty? She was as beautiful as an angel. And to think of her
distributing those damned woman's rights pamphlets! She left one on my
desk," he added, sticking out his lower lip like a crying child, and
wiping his bloodshot eyes on the hem of his silk handkerchief. "I tell
you if she'd had a husband this would never have happened."
"We can't tell--it might have been worse, if she believes it."
"Believes what, sir?" gasped the great man, enraged. "Believes that
outlandish Yankee twaddle about a woman wanting any rights except the
right to a husband! Do you think she'd be running round loose in this
crackbrained way if she had a home she could stay in and a husband she
could slave over? I tell you there's not a woman alive that ain't
happier with a bad husband than with none at all."
"That's a comfortable view, at any rate."
"View? It's not a view, it's a fact--and what business has a lady got
with a view anyway? If Miss Matoaca hadn't got hold of those heathenish
views, she'd be a happy wife and mother this very minute."
"Does it follow, General, that she would have been a happy one?" I asked
a little unfairly.
"Of course it follows. Isn't every wife and mother happy? What more does
she want unless she's a Yankee Abolitionist?"
"Who's a Yankee?" enquired young George, in his amiable voice from the
hall. "I'm surprised to hear you calling names when the war is over,
sir."
"I wasn't calling names, George. I was just saying that Miss Matoaca
Bland was a Yankee. Did you ever hear of a Virginia lady who wasn't
content to be what the Lord and the men intended her?"
"No, sir, I never did--but it seems to me that Miss Matoaca has managed
to secure a greater share of your attention than the more amenable
Virginia ladies."
"Well, isn't it a sad enough sight to see any lady going cracked?"
retorted the General, hotly; "do you know, George, that Sally
Mickleborough--he says he's sure it's Sally Mickleborough--has promised
to marry Ben Starr?"
"Oh, it's Sally all right," responded George, "she has just told me."
He came over and held out his hand, smiling pleasantly, though there was
a hurt look in his eyes.
"I congratulate you, Ben," he observed in his easy, good-natured way,
"the best man comes in ahead."
His face wore the frown, not from temper, but from pain, that I had seen
on it at the club when his favourite hunter had dropped dead, and he had
tried to appear indifferent. He was a superb horseman, a typical man
about town, a bit of a sport, also, as Dr. Theophilus said. I knew he
loved Sally, just as I had known he loved his hunter, by a sympathetic
reading of his character rather than by any expression of regret on his
long, highly coloured, slightly wooden countenance, with its set mouth
over which drooped a mustache so carefully trimmed that it looked almost
as if it were glued on his upper lip.
"By the way, uncle, have you heard the last news?" he asked, "Barclay is
buying all the A. P. & C. Stock he can lay hands on. It's selling at--"
"Hello! What's that? Barclay, did you say? I knew it was coming, and
that he'd spring it. Here, Hatty, give me my cape, I'm going back to the
office!"
"George, George, the doctor told you not to excite yourself,"
remonstrated Miss Hatty, appearing in the doorway with a glass of
medicine in her hand.
"Excite myself? Pish! Tush!" retorted the General, "I ain't a bit more
excited than you are yourself. Do you think if I hadn't had a cool head
they'd have made me president of the South Midland? But I tell you
Barclay's trying to get control of the A. P. & C., and I'll be blamed if
he shall! Do you want him to snatch a railroad out of my very mouth,
madam?"
By this time he had got into his cape and slouch hat, turning at the
last moment to swallow Miss Hatty's dose of medicine with a wry mouth.
Then with one arm in George's and one in mine, he descended the steps
and limped as far as the car line on Main Street.
On that same afternoon I walked out to meet Sally on her ride in one of
the country roads to what was called "the Pump House," and when she had
dismounted, we strolled together along the little path under the scarlet
buds of young maples. At the end of the path there was a rude bench
placed beside the stream, which broke from the dam above with a sound
that was like laughing water. The grass was powdered with small spring
flowers, and overhead a sycamore drooped its silvery branches to the
sparkling waves. Spring was in the air, in the scarlet buds of maples,
in the song of birds, in the warm wind that played on Sally's flushed
cheek and lifted a loosened curl on her forehead. And spring was in my
heart, too, as I sat there beside her, on the old bench, with her hand
in mine.
"You will marry me in November, Sally?"
"On the nineteenth of November, as I promised. Aunt Mitty and Aunt
Matoaca have forbidden me to mention your name to them, so I shall walk
with you to church some morning--to old Saint John's, I think, Ben."
"Then may God punish me if I ever fail you," I answered.
Her look softened. "You will never fail me."
"You will trust me now and in all the future?"
"Now and in all the future."
As we strolled back a little later to her horse that was tethered to a
maple on the roadside, I told her of the success of the National Oil
Company and of the possibility that I might some day be a rich man.
"As things go in the South, sweetheart, I'm a rich man now for my
years."
"I am glad for your sake, Ben, but I have never expected to have wealth,
you know."
"All the same I want you to have it, I want to give it to you."
"Then I'll begin to love it for your sake--if it means that to you?"
"It means nothing else. But what do you think it will mean to your aunts
next November?"
She shook her head, while I untethered Dolly, the sorrel mare.
"They haven't a particle of worldliness, either of them, and I don't
believe it will make any great difference if we have millions. Of course
if you were, for instance, the president of the South Midland they would
not have refused to receive you, but they would have objected quite as
strongly to your marrying into the family. What you are yourself might
concern them if they were inviting you to dinner, but when it is a
question of connecting yourself with their blood, it is what your father
was that affects them. I really believe," she finished half angrily,
half humorously, "that Aunt Mitty--not Aunt Matoaca--would honestly
rather I'd marry a well-born drunkard or libertine than you, whom she
calls 'quite an extraordinary-looking young man.'"
"Then if they can neither be cajoled nor bought, I see no hope for
them," I replied, laughing, as she sprang from my hand into her saddle.
The red flame of the maple was in her face as she looked back at me.
"Everything will come right, Ben, if we only love enough," she said.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PRINCIPLES OF MISS MATOACA
When I walked down to the office now, I began to be pointed out as "the
General's wonderful boy." Invitations to start companies, or to
directorships of innumerable boards, were showered upon me, and
adventurous promoters of vain schemes sought desperately to shelter
themselves behind my growing credit. Then, in the following October, the
consolidated oil interests bought out my business at my own price, and I
awoke one glorious morning to the knowledge that my fortune was made.
"If you're going to swell, Ben, now's the time," said the General, "and
out you go."
But my training had been in a hard school, and by the end of the month
he had ceased to enquire in the mornings "if my hat still fitted my
head."
"You'll have your ups and downs, Ben, like the rest of us," he said,
"but the main thing is, let your fortunes see-saw as they may, always
keep your eyes on a level. By the way, I saw Sally Mickleborough last
night, and when I asked her why she fell in love with you, she replied
it was because she saw you pushing a wheel up a hill. Now there's a
woman with a reason--you'd better look sharp, or she'll begin talking
politics presently like her Aunt Matoaca. What do you think I found on
my desk this morning? A pamphlet, addressed in her handwriting, about
the presidential election." Then his tone softened. "So Sally's going to
marry you in spite of her aunts? Well, she's a good girl, a brave girl,
and I'm proud of her."
When I went home to supper, I was to have a different opinion from Dr.
Theophilus.
"I saw Sally Mickleborough to-day, Ben, when I called on Miss
Matoaca,--[that poor lady gets flightier every day, she left a pamphlet
here this morning about the presidential election]--and the girl told me
in the few minutes I saw her in the hall, that she meant to marry you
next month."
"She will do me that great honour, doctor."
"Well, I regret it, Ben; I can't conceal from you that I regret it.
You're a good boy, and I'm proud of you, but I don't like to see young
folks putting themselves in opposition to the judgment of their elders.
I'm an orthodox believer in the claims of blood, you know."
"And is there nothing to be said for the claims of love?"
"The claims of moonshine, Ben," observed Mrs. Clay in her sharp voice,
looking up from a pair of yarn socks she was knitting for the doctor;
"you know I'm fond of you, but when you begin to talk of the claims of
love driving a girl to break with her family, I feel like boxing your
ears."
"You see, Tina is a cynic," remarked Dr. Theophilus, smiling, "and I
don't doubt that she has her excellent reasons, as usual; most cynics
have. A woman, however, has got to believe in love to the point of
lunacy or become a scoffer. What I contend, now, is that love isn't
moonshine, but that however solid a thing it may be, it isn't, after
all, as solid as one's duty to one's family."
"Of course I can't argue with you, doctor. I know little of the unit you
call 'the family'; but I should think the first duty of the family would
be to consider the happiness of the individual."
"And do you think, Ben, that you are the only person who is considering
Sally's happiness?"
"I know that I am considering it; for the rest I can't speak."
"I firmly believe," broke in Mrs. Clay, "that Sally's behaviour has
helped to drive Matoaca Bland clean out of her wits. She's actually sent
me one of her leaflets,--what do you think of that, Theophilus?--to me,
the most refined and retiring woman on earth."
"What I'd say, Tina, is that you aren't half as refined and retiring as
Miss Matoaca," chuckled the doctor.
"That is merely the way she dresses," rejoined Mrs. Clay stiffly; "it is
her poke bonnet and black silk mantle that deceives you. As for me, I
can call no woman truly refined who does not naturally avoid the society
of men."
"Well, Tina, I had a notion that all of you were pretty fond of it, when
it comes to that."
"Not of the society of men, Theophilus, but of the select attentions of
gentlemen."
"I'm not taking up for Miss Matoaca," pursued the good man; "I can't
conscientiously do that, and I'm more concerned at this minute about the
marriage of Ben and Sally. You may smile at me as superstitious, if you
please, but I never yet saw a marriage turn out happily that was made in
defiance of family feeling."
As I could make no reply to this, except to put forward a second time
what Mrs. Clay had tartly called "the claims of moonshine," I bade the
doctor goodnight, and going upstairs to my room, sat down beside the
small square window, which gave on the garden, with its miniature box
borders and its single clipped yew-tree, over which a young moon was
rising. "A mixture of a fighter and a dreamer," the old man had once
called me, and it seemed to me now that something apart from the mere
business of living and the alert man of affairs, brooded in me over the
young moon and the yew-tree.
A letter from Sally had reached me a few hours before, and taking it
from my pocket, I turned to the lamp and read it for the sixth time with
a throbbing heart.
"You ask me if I am happy, dearest," she wrote, "and I answer that I am
happy, with a still, deep happiness, over which a hundred troubles and
cares ripple like shadows on a lake. But oh! poor Aunt Mitty, with her
silent hurt pride in her face, and poor Aunt Matoaca, with the strained,
unnatural brightness in her eyes, and her cheeks so like rose leaves
that have crumpled. Oh, Ben, I believe Aunt Matoaca is living over again
her own romance, and it breaks my heart. Last night I went into her
room, and found her with her old yellowed wedding veil and orange
blossoms laid out on the bed. She tried to pretend that she was
straightening her cedar chests, but she looked so little and
pitiable--if you could only have seen her! I wonder what she would be
now if the General had been a man like you? How grateful I am, how
profoundly thankful with my whole heart that I am marrying a man that I
can trust!"
"That I can trust!" Her words rang in my ears, and I heard them again,
clear and strong, the next morning, when I met Miss Matoaca as I was on
my way to my office. She was coming slowly up Franklin Street, her arms
filled with packages, and when she recognised me, with a shy, startled
movement to turn aside, a number of leaflets fluttered from her grasp to
the pavement between us. When I stooped and gathered them up, her face,
under the old-fashioned poke bonnet, was brought close to my eyes, and I
saw that she looked wan and pinched, and that her bright brown eyes were
shining as if from fever.
"Mr. Starr," she said, straightening her thin little figure as I handed
her the leaflets, "I've wanted for some time to speak a word to you on
the subject of my niece--Miss Mickleborough."
"Yes, Miss Matoaca."
"My sister Mitty thought it better that I should refrain from doing so,
and upon such matters she has excellent judgment. It is my habit,
indeed, to yield to her opinion in everything except a question of
conscience."
"Yes?" for again she had paused. "It is very kind of you," I added.
"I do not mean it for kindness, Mr. Starr. My niece is very dear to me;
and since poor Sarah's unfortunate experience, we have felt
more--strongly, if possible, about unequal marriages. I know that you
are a most remarkable young man, but I do not feel that you are in any
way suited to make the happiness of our niece--Miss Mickleborough--"
"I am sorry, Miss Matoaca, but Miss Mickleborough thinks differently."
"Young people are rarely the best judges in such matters, Mr. Starr."
"But do you think their elders can judge for them?"
"If they have had experience--yes."
"Ah, Miss Matoaca, does our own experience ever teach us to understand
the experience of others?"
"The Blands have never needed to be taught," she returned with pride,
"that the claims of the family are not to be sacrificed to--to a
sentiment. Except in the case of poor Sarah there has never been a
mésalliance in our history. We have always put one thing above the
consideration of our blood, and that is--a principle. If it were a
question of conscience, however painful it might be to me, I should
uphold my niece in her opposition to my sister Mitty. I myself have
opposed her for a matter of principle."
"I am aware of it, Miss Matoaca."
Her withered cheeks were tinged with a delicate rose, and I could almost
see the working of her long, narrow mind behind her long, narrow face.
"I should like to leave a few of these leaflets with you, Mr. Starr,"
she said.
A minute afterwards, when she had moved on with her meek, slow walk, I
was left standing on the pavement with her suffrage pamphlets fluttering
in my hand. Stuffing them hurriedly into my pocket, I went on to the
office, utterly oblivious of the existence of any principle on earth
except the one underlying the immediate expansion of the Great South
Midland and Atlantic Railroad.
A fortnight later I heard that Miss Matoaca had begun writing letters to
the "Richmond Herald"; and I remembered, with an easy masculine
complacency, the pamphlets I had thrown into the waste basket beside the
General's desk. The presidential election, with its usual upheaval of
the business world, had arrived; and that timid little Miss Matoaca
should have intruded herself into the affairs of the nation did not
occur to me as possible, until the General informed me, while we watched
a Democratic procession one afternoon, that Miss Mitty had come to him
the day before in tears over the impropriety of her sister's conduct.
"She begged me to remonstrate with Miss Matoaca," he pursued, "and by
George, I promised her that I would. There's one thing, Ben, I've never
been able to stand, and that's the sight of a woman in tears. Of course
when you've made 'em cry yourself, it is different; but to have a lady
coming to you weeping over somebody else--and a lady like Miss
Mitty--well, I honestly believe if she'd requested me to give her my
skin, I'd have tried to get out of it just to oblige her."
"Did you go to Miss Matoaca?" I asked, for the picture of the General
lecturing his old love on the subject of the proprieties had caught my
attention even in the midst of a large Democratic procession that was
marching along the street. While he rambled on in his breaking voice,
which had begun to grow weak and old, I gazed over his head at the
political banners with their familiar, jesting inscriptions.
"I declare, Ben, I'd rather have swallowed a dose of medicine," he went
on; "you see I used to know Miss Matoaca very well forty years ago--I
reckon you've heard of it. We were engaged to be married, and it was
broken off because of some woman's rights nonsense she'd got in her
head."
"Well, it's hard to imagine your interview of yesterday."
"There wasn't any interview. I went to her and put it as mildly as I
could. 'Miss Matoaca,' I said, 'I'm sorry to hear you've gone cracked.'"
"And how did she take it?"
"'Do you mean my heart or my head, General?' she asked--she had always
plenty of spirit, had Matoaca, for all her soft looks. 'It's your head,'
I answered. 'Lord knows I'm not casting any reflections on the rest of
you.' 'Then it has fared better than my heart, General,' she replied,
'for that was broken.' She looked kind of wild, Ben, as she said it. I
don't know what she was talking about, I declare on my honour I don't!"
A cheer went up from the procession, and an expression of eager
curiosity came into his face.
"Can you read that inscription, Ben? My eyes ain't so good as they used
to be."
"It's some campaign joke. So your lecture wasn't quite a success?"
"It would have been if she'd listened to reason."
"But she did not, I presume?"
"She never listened to it in her life. If she had, she wouldn't be a
poor miserable old maid at this moment. What's that coming they're
making such a noise about? My God, Ben, if it ain't Matoaca herself!"
It was Matoaca, and the breathless horror in the General's voice passed
into my own mind as I looked. There she was, in her poke bonnet and her
black silk mantle, walking primly at the straggling end of the
procession, among a crowd of hooting small boys and gaping negroes. Her
eyes, very wide and bright, like the eyes of one who is mentally
deranged, were fixed straight ahead, over the lines of men marching in
front of her, on the blue sky above the church steeples. Under her poke
bonnet I saw her meekly parted hair and her faded cheeks, flushed now
with a hectic colour. In one neatly gloved hand her silk skirt was held
primly; in the other she carried a little white silk flag, on which the
staring gold letters were lost in the rippling folds. With her eyes on
the sky and her feet in the dust, she marched, a prim, ladylike figure,
an inspired spinster, oblivious alike of the hooting small boys and the
half-compassionate, half-scoffing gazers upon the pavement.
"She's crazy, Ben," said the General, and his voice broke with a sob.
For a minute, as dazed as he, I stared blankly at the little figure with
the white flag. Then bewilderment gave place before the call to action,
and it seemed to me that I saw Sally there in Miss Matoaca, as I had
seen her in the rising moon over the clipped yew, and in the whirlpool
of the stock market. Leaving my place at the General's side, I descended
the steps at a bound, and made my way through the jostling, noisy crowd
to the little lady in its midst.
"Miss Matoaca!" I said.
For the first time her eyes left the sky, and as she looked down, the
consciousness of her situation entered into her strained bright eyes.
Her composure was lost in a birdlike, palpitating movement of terror.
"I--I am going as far as the Square, Mr. Starr," she replied, as if she
were repeating by rote a phrase in a strange tongue.
At my approach the ridicule, somewhat subdued by the sense of her
helplessness, broke suddenly loose. Bending over I offered her my arm,
my head still uncovered. As the hand holding the white flag drooped from
exhaustion, I took it, with the banner, into my own.
"Then I'll go with you, Miss Matoaca," I responded.
We started on, took a few measured paces in the line of march, and then
her strength failing her, she sank back, with a pathetic moan of
weariness, into my arms. Lifting her like a child I carried her out of
the street and up the steps into the General's office. Turning at a
touch as I entered the room, I saw that Sally was at my side.
"I've sent for Dr. Theophilus," she said. "There, put her on the
lounge."
Kneeling on the floor she began bathing Miss Matoaca's forehead with
water which somebody had brought. The General, his eyes very red and
bloodshot and his lower lip fallen into a senile droop, was trying
vainly to fan her with his pocket-handkerchief.
"We have always feared this would happen," said Sally, very quiet and
pale.
"She was talking to me yesterday about her heart," returned the General,
"and I didn't know what she meant."
He bent over, fanning her more violently with his silk handkerchief, and
on the lounge beneath, Miss Matoaca lay, very prim and maidenly, with
her skirt folded modestly about her ankles.
Dr. Theophilus, coming in with the messenger, bent over her for a long
minute.
"I always thought her sense of honour would kill her," he said at last
as he looked up.
CHAPTER XIX
SHOWS THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE
A week after Miss Matoaca's funeral, Sally met me in one of the secluded
streets by the Capitol Square, and we walked slowly up and down for an
hour in the November sunshine. In her black clothes she appeared to have
bloomed into a brighter beauty, a richer colour.
"Why can't I believe, Sally, that you will really marry me a week from
to-day?"
"A week from to-day. Just you and I in old Saint John's."
"And Miss Mitty, will she not come with you?"
"She refuses to let me speak your name to her. It would be hard to leave
her, Ben, if--if she hadn't been so bitter and stern to me for the last
year. I live in the same house with her and see nothing of her."
"I thought Miss Matoaca's death might have softened her."
"Nothing will soften her. Aunt Matoaca's death has hurt her terribly, I
know, but--and this is a dreadful thing to say--I believe it has hurt
her pride more than her heart. If the poor dear had died quietly in her
bed, with her prayer-book on the counterpane, Aunt Mitty would have
grieved for her in an entirely different way. She lives in a kind of
stained-glass seclusion, and anything outside of that seems to her
vulgar--even emotion."
"How I must have startled her."
"You startled her so that she has never had courage to face the effect.
Think what it must mean to a person who has lived sixty-five years in an
atmosphere of stained glass to be dragged outside and made to look at
the great common sun--"
A squirrel, running out from between the iron railing surrounding the
square, crossed the pavement and then sat erect in front of us, his
bushy tail waving like a brush over his ears. While she was bending over
to speak to it, the Bland surrey turned the corner at a rapid pace, and
I saw the figure of Miss Mitty, swathed heavily in black, sitting very
stiff and upright behind old Shadrach. As she caught sight of us, she
leaned slightly forward, and in obedience to her order, the carriage
stopped the next instant beside the pavement.
"Sally!" she called, and there was no hint in her manner that she was
aware of my presence.
"Yes, Aunt Mitty." The girl had straightened herself, and stood calmly
and without embarrassment at my side.
"I should like you to come with me to Hollywood."
"Yes, Aunt Mitty."
Pausing for an instant, she gave me her hand. "Until Wednesday, Ben,"
she said in a low, clear voice, and then entering the surrey, she took
her place under the fur robe and was driven away.
The week dragged by like a century, and on Wednesday morning, when I got
up and opened my shutters, I found that our wedding-day had begun in a
slow autumnal rain. A thick tent of clouds stretched overhead, and the
miniature box in the garden looked like flutings of crape on the pebbled
walk, which had been washed clean and glistening during the night. The
clipped yew stood dark and sombre as a solitary mourner among the
blossomless rose-bushes.
At breakfast Mrs. Clay poured my coffee with a rigid hand and an averted
face, and Dr. Theophilus appeared to find difficulty in keeping up his
cheerful morning comments.
"I'll miss you, Ben, my boy," he remarked, as he rose from the table;
"it's a sad day for me when I lose you."
"I hate to lose you, doctor, but I shan't, after all, be far off. I've
bought a house, as you know, beyond the Park in Franklin Street."
"The one Jack Montgomery used to live in before he lost his money--yes,
it is a fine place. Well, you have my best wishes, Ben, whatever comes;
you may be sure of that. I hope you and Sally will have every
happiness."
He shook my hand in his hearty grasp before going into his little
office, and the next minute I went out into the rain, and walked down
for a few words with the General, before I met Sally under the big
sycamore at the side gate. I had waited for her but a little while when
she came out under an umbrella held by Aunt Euphronasia, who was to
accompany us on our journey South in the General's private car. As she
entered the carriage, I saw that she wore a white dress under her long
black cloak.
"Mammy wouldn't let me be married in black," she said; "she says it
means death or a bad husband."
"Dar ain' gwine be a bad husband fur dish yer chile," grumbled the old
woman, who was evidently full of gloomy forebodings, "caze she ain'
built wid de kinder spine, suh, dat bends easy."
"There'll be nobody at church?" asked Sally.
"Only the General, and I suppose the sexton."
"I am glad." She leaned forward, we clasped hands, and I saw that the
eyes she lifted to mine were starry and expectant, as they had been that
day, so many years ago, when she stood between the gate and the bed of
geraniums in the General's yard.
The carriage rolled softly over the soaking streets, and above the sound
of the wheels I heard the patter of the rain on the dead leaves in the
gutters. I can see still a wet sparrow or two that fluttered down from
the bared branches, and the negro maid sweeping the water from the steps
in front of the doctor's house. There was no wind, and the rain fell in
straight elongated drops like a shower of silvery pine-needles. The
mixture of a fighter and a dreamer! On my wedding-day, as I sat beside
the woman I loved, approaching the fulfilment of my desire, I was
conscious of a curious gravity, of almost a feeling of sadness. The
stillness without, intensified by the slow, soft fall of the rain on the
dead leaves, seemed not detached, but at one with the inner stillness
which possessed alike my heart and my brain. I, the man of action, the
embodiment of worldly success, was awed by the very intensity of my
love, which added a throb of apprehension to the supreme moment of its
fulfilment.
The carriage crawled up the long hill, and stopped before the steps
leading to the churchyard of Saint John's. Like a sombre omen up went
the umbrella in the hands of Aunt Euphronasia; and as I led Sally across
the pavement to the General, who stood waiting under the dripping maples
and sycamores, I saw that she was very pale, and that her lips trembled
when she smiled back at me. With her arm in the General's, she passed
before me up the walk to the church door, while Aunt Euphronasia and I
followed under the same umbrella a short way behind.
At the door the minister met us with outstretched hands, for he had
known us from childhood; and when Aunt Euphronasia had removed the
bride's moist cloak, Sally joined me before the altar, in the square of
faint light that fell from the windows. The interior of the church was
very dim, so dim that her white dress and the minister's gown seemed the
only patches of high light in the obscurity. Through the window I could
see the wet silvery boughs of a sycamore, and, I remember still, as if
it had been illuminated upon my brain, a single bronzed leaf that
writhed and twisted at the end of a slender branch. Never in my life had
my mind been so awake to trivial impressions, so acutely aware of the
external world, so perfectly unable to realise the profound significance
of the words I uttered. The sound of the soft rain on the graves outside
was in my ears, and instead of my marriage, I found myself thinking of
the day I had seen Sally dancing toward me in her red shoes, over the
coloured leaves. In those few minutes, which changed the course of our
two lives, it was as if I myself--the man that men knew--had been
present only in a dream.
When it was over, the General kissed Sally, and wiped his eyes on his
silk handkerchief.
"You're a brave girl, my dear, and I'm proud of you," he said; "you've
got your mother's heart and your father's fighting blood, and that's a
good blending."
"I wish the sun had shone on you," observed the old minister, while I
helped her into her cloak; "but we Christians can't afford to waste
regret on heathen superstitions. I married your mother," he added, as if
there were possible comfort in a proof of the futility of omens, "on a
cloudless morning in June."
Sally shivered, and glanced across the churchyard, where the water
dripped from the bared trees on the graves that were covered thickly
with sodden leaves.
"The sun may welcome us home," she replied, with an effort to be
cheerful; "we shall be back again in a fortnight."
"And you go South?" asked the minister nervously, like a man who tries
to make conversation because his professional duty requires it of him.
Then the umbrella went up again, and after a good-by to the General, we
started together down the walk, with Aunt Euphronasia following close as
a shadow.
"The rain does not sadden you, sweetheart?"
"It saddens me, but that does not mean that I am not happy."
"And you would do it over again?"
"I would do it over until--until the last hour of my life."
"Oh, Sally, Sally, if I were only sure that I was worthy."
A light broke in her face, and as she looked up at me, I bent over and
kissed her under the leafless trees.
CHAPTER XX
IN WHICH SOCIETY RECEIVES US
It was a bright December evening when we returned to Richmond, and drove
through the frosty air to our new home. The house was large and modern,
with a hideous brown stone front, and at the top of the brown stone
steps several girl friends of Sally's were waiting to receive us. Beyond
them, in the brilliantly lighted hall, I saw masses of palms and roses
under the oak staircase.
"Oh, you bad Sally, not even to ask us to your wedding. And you know how
we adore one!" cried a handsome, dark girl in a riding habit, named
Bonny Page. "How do you do, Mr. Starr? We're to call you 'Ben' now
because you've married our cousin."
I made some brief response, and while I spoke, I felt again the old
sense of embarrassment, of strangeness in my surroundings, that always
came upon me in a gathering of women--especially of girls. With Sally I
never forgot that I was a strong man,--with Bonny Page I remembered only
that I was a plain one. As she stood there, with her arm about Sally,
and her black eyes dancing with fun, she looked the incarnate spirit of
mischief,--and beside the spirit of mischief I felt decidedly heavy. She
was a tall, splendid girl, with a beautiful figure,--the belle of
Richmond and the best horsewoman of the state. I had seen her take a
jump that had brought my heart to my throat, and come down on the other
side with a laugh. A little dazzling, a little cold, fine, quick,
generous to her friends, and merciless to her lovers, I had wondered
often what subtle sympathy had knit Sally and herself so closely
together.
"You'd always promised that I should be your bridesmaid," she remarked
reproachfully; "she's hurt us dreadfully, hasn't she, Bessy? And it's
very forgiving of us to warm her house and have her dinner ready for
her."
Bessy, the little heroine of the azalea wreath and my first party,
murmured shyly that she hoped the furniture was placed right and that
the dinner would be good.
"Oh, you darlings, it's too sweet of you!" said Sally, entering the
drawing-room, amid palms and roses, with an arm about the neck of each.
"You know, don't you," she went on, "that poor Aunt Mitty's not coming
kept me from having even you? How is she, Bonny? O Bonny, she won't
speak to me."
Immediately she was clasped in Bonny's arms, where she shed a few tears
on Bonny's handsome shoulder.
"She'll grow used to it," said little Bessy; "but, Sally, how did you
have the courage?"
"Ask Bonny how she had the courage to take that five-foot jump."
"I took it with my teeth set and my eyes shut," said Bonny.
"Well, that's how I took Ben, with my teeth set and my eyes shut tight."
"And I came down with a laugh," added Bonny.
"So did I--I came down with a laugh. Oh, you dears, how lovely the house
looks! Here are all the bridal roses that I missed and you've
remembered."
"There're blue roses in your room," said Bonny; "I mean on the chintz
and on the paper."
"How can I help being happy, when I have blue roses, Bonny? Aren't blue
roses an emblem of the impossible achieved?"
Bonny's dancing black eyes were on me, and I read in them plainly the
thought, "Yes, I'm going to be nice to you because Sally has married
you, and Sally's my cousin--even if I can't understand how she came to
do it."
No, she couldn't understand, and she never would, this I read also. The
man that she saw and the man that Sally knew were two different persons,
drawing life from two different sources of sympathy. To her I was still,
and would always be, the "magnificent animal,"--a creature of good
muscle and sinew, with an honest eye, doubtless, and clean hands, but
lacking in the finer qualities of person and manner that must appeal to
her taste. Where Sally beheld power, and admired, Bonny Page saw only
roughness, and wondered.
Presently, they led her away, and I heard their merry voices floating
down from the bedrooms above. The pink light of the candles on the
dinner table in the room beyond, the vague, sweet scent of the roses,
and the warmth of the wood fire burning on the andirons, seemed to grow
faint and distant, for I was very tired with the fatigue of a man whose
muscles are cramped from want of exercise. I felt all at once that I had
stepped from the open world into a place that was too small for me. I
was a rich man at last, I was the husband, too, of the princess of the
enchanted garden, and yet in the midst of the perfume and the soft
lights and the laughter floating down from above, I saw myself, by some
freak of memory, as I had crouched homeless in the straw under a
deserted stall in the Old Market. Would the thought of the boy I had
been haunt forever the man I had become? Did my past add a keener
happiness to my present, or hang always like a threatening shadow above
it? There was a part in my life which these girls could not understand,
which even Sally, whom I loved, could never share with me. How could
they or she comprehend hunger, who had never gone without for a moment?
Or sympathise with the lust of battle when they had never encountered an
obstacle? Already I heard the call of the streets, and my blood
responded to it in the midst of the scented atmosphere. These things
were for Sally, but for me was the joy of the struggle, the passion to
achieve that I might return, with my spoils and pile them higher and
higher before her feet. The grasping was what I loved, not the
possession; the instant of triumph, not the fruits of the conquest. Love
throbbed in my heart, but my mind, as if freeing itself from a
restraint, followed the Great South Midland and Atlantic, covering that
night under the stars nearly twenty thousand miles of road. The
elemental man in me chafed under the social curb, and I longed at that
instant to bear the woman I had won out into the rough joys of the
world. My muscles would soon grow flabby in this scented warmth. The
fighter would war with the dreamer, and I would regret the short, fierce
battle with my competitors in the business of life.
A slight sound made me turn, and I saw Bonny Page standing alone in the
doorway, and looking straight at me with her dancing eyes.
"I don't know you yet, Ben," she said in the direct, gallant manner of a
perfect horsewoman, "but I'm going to like you."
"Please try," I answered, "and I'll do my best not to make it hard."
"I don't think it will be hard, but even if it were, I'd do it for
Sally's sake. Sally is my darling."
"And mine. So we're alike in one thing at least."
"I'm perfectly furious with Aunt Mitty. I mean to tell her so the next
time I've taken a high jump."
"Poor Miss Mitty. How can she help herself? She was born that way."
"Well, it was a very bad way to be born--to want to break Sally's heart.
Do you know, I think it was delightful--the way you did it. If I'm ever
married, I want to run away, too,--only I'll run away on horseback,
because that will be far more exciting."
She ran on merrily, partly I knew to take my measure while she watched
me, partly to ease the embarrassment which her exquisite social instinct
had at once discerned. She was charming, friendly, almost affectionate,
yet I was conscious all the time that, in spite of herself, she was a
little critical, a trifle aloof. Her perfect grooming, the very fineness
of her self-possession, her high-bred gallantry of manner, and even the
shining gloss on her black, beribboned hair, and her high boots,
produced in me a sense of remoteness, which I found it impossible
altogether to overcome.
In a little while there was a flutter on the staircase, and the other
girls trooped down, with Sally in their midst. She had changed her
travelling dress for a gown of white, cut low at the neck, and about her
throat she wore a necklace of pearls I had given her at her wedding.
There was a bright flush in her face, and she looked to me as she had
done that day, in her red shoes, in Saint John's churchyard.
When I came downstairs from my dressing-room, I found that the girls had
gone, and she was standing by the dinner table, with her face bent down
over the vase of pink roses in the centre.
"So we are in our own home, darling, at last," I said, and a few minutes
later, as I looked across the pink candle shades and the roses, and saw
her sitting opposite to me, I told myself that at last both the fighter
in me and the dreamer had found the fulfilment of their desire.
After dinner, when I had had my smoke in the library, we caught hands
and wandered like two children over the new house--into the pink and
white guest room, and then into Sally's bedroom, where the blue roses
sprawled over the chintz-covered furniture and the silk curtains. A
glass door gave on a tiny balcony, and throwing a shawl about her head
and her bare shoulders, she went with me out into the frosty December
night, where a cold bright moon was riding high above the church
steeples. With my arm about her, and her head on my breast, we stood in
silence gazing over the city, while the sense of her nearness, of her
throbbing spirit and body, filled my heart with an exquisite peace.
"You and I are the world, Ben."
"You are my world, anyway."
"It is such a happy world to-night. There is nothing but love in it--no
pain, no sorrow, no disappointment. Why doesn't everybody love, I
wonder?"
"Everybody hasn't you."
"I'm so sorry for poor Aunt Mitty,--she never loved,--and for poor Aunt
Matoaca, because she didn't love my lover. Oh, you are so strong, Ben;
that, I think, is why I first loved you! I see you always in the
background of my thoughts pushing that wheel up the hill."
"That won you. And to think if I'd known you were there, Sally, I
couldn't have done it."
"That, too, is why I love you, so there's another reason! It
isn't only your strength, Ben, it is, I believe, still more your
self-forgetfulness. Then you forgot yourself because you thought of the
poor horse; and again, do you remember the day of Aunt Matoaca's death,
when you gave her your arm and took her little flag in your hand? You
would have marched all the way to the Capitol just like that, and I
don't believe you would ever have known that it looked ridiculous or
that people were laughing at you."
"To tell the truth, Sally, I should never have cared."
She clung closer, her perfumed hair on my breast.
"And yet they wondered why I loved you," she murmured; "they wondered
why!"
"Can you guess why I loved you?" I asked. "Was it for your red shoes? Or
for that tiny scar like a dimple I've always adored?"
"I never told you what made that," she said, after a moment. "I was a
very little baby when my father got angry with mamma one day--he had
been drinking--and he upset the cradle in which I was asleep."
She lifted her face, and I kissed the scar under the white shawl.
The next day when I came home to luncheon, she told me that she had been
to her old home to see Miss Mitty.
"I couldn't stand the thought of her loneliness, so I went into the
drawing-room at the hour I knew she would be tending her sweet alyssum
and Dicky, the canary. She was there, looking very thin and old, and,
Ben, she treated me like a stranger. She wouldn't kiss me, and she
didn't ask me a single question--only spoke of the weather and her
flower boxes, as if I had called for the first time."
"I know, I know," I said, taking her into my arms.
"And everybody else is so kind. People have been sending me flowers all
day. Did you ever see such a profusion? They are all calling, too,--the
Fitzhughs, the Harrisons, the Tuckers, the Mayos, Jennie Randolph came,
and old Mrs. Tucker, who never goes anywhere since her daughter died,
and Charlotte Peyton, and all the Corbins in a bunch." Then her tone
changed. "Ben," she said, "I want to see that little sister of yours.
Will you take me there this afternoon?"
Something in her request, or in the way she uttered it, touched me to
the heart.
"I'd like you to see Jessy--she's pretty enough to look at--but I didn't
mean you to marry my family, you know."
"I know you didn't, dear, but I've married everything of yours all the
same. If you can spare a few minutes after luncheon, we'll drive down
and speak to her."
I could spare the few minutes, and when the carriage was ready, she came
down in her hat and furs, and we went at a merry pace down Franklin
Street to the boarding-house in which Jessy was living. As we drove up
to the pavement, the door of the house opened and my little sister came
out, dressed for walking and looking unusually pretty.
"Why, Ben, she's a beauty!" said Sally, in a whisper, as the girl
approached us. To me Jessy's face had always appeared too cold and
vacant for beauty, in spite of her perfect features and the brilliant
fairness of her complexion. Even now I missed the glow of feeling or of
animation in her glance, as she crossed the pavement with her slow,
precise walk, and put her hand into Sally's.
"How do you do? It is very kind of you to come," she said in a measured,
correct voice.
"Of course I came, Jessy. I am your new sister, and you must come and
stay with me when I am out of mourning."
"Thank you," responded Jessy gravely, "I should like to."
The cold had touched her cheek until it looked like tinted marble, and
under her big black hat her blond hair rolled in natural waves from her
forehead.
"Are you happy here, Jessy?" I asked.
"They are very kind to me. There's an old gentleman boarding here now
from the West. He is going to give us a theatre party to-night. They say
he has millions." For the first time the glow of enthusiasm shone in her
limpid blue eyes.
"A good use to make of his millions," I laughed. "Do you hear often from
President, Jessy?"
The glow faded from her eyes and they grew cold again. "He writes such
bad letters," she answered, "I can hardly read them."
"Never forget," I answered sternly, "that he denied himself an education
in order that you might become what you are."
While I spoke the door of the house opened again, and the old gentleman
she had alluded to came gingerly down the steps. He had a small, wizened
face, and he wore a fur-lined overcoat, in which it was evident that he
still suffered from the cold.
"This is my brother and my sister, Mr. Cottrel," said Jessy, as he came
slowly toward us.
He bowed with a pompous manner, and stood twirling the chain of his
eye-glasses. "Yes, yes, I have heard of your brother. His name is well
known already," he answered. "I congratulate, sir," he added, "not the
'man who got rich quickly,' as I've heard you called, but the fortunate
brother of a beautiful sister."
"What a perfectly horrid old man," remarked Sally, some minutes later,
as we drove back again. "I think, Ben, we'll have to take the little
sister. She's a beauty."
"If she wasn't so everlastingly cold and quiet."
"It suits her style--that little precise way she has. There's a look
about her like one of Perugino's saints."
Then the carriage stopped at the office, and I returned, with a high
heart, to the game.
CHAPTER XXI
I AM THE WONDER OF THE HOUR
During the first year of my marriage I was already spoken of as the most
successful speculator in the state. The whirlpool of finance had won me
from the road, and I had sacrificed the single allegiance to the bolder
moves of the game. Yet if I could be bold, I was cautious, too,--and
that peculiar quality which the General called "financial genius," and
the world named "the luck of the speculator," had enabled me to act
always between the two dangerous extremes of timidity and rashness. "To
get up when others sat down, and to sit down when others got up," I told
the General one day, had been the rule by which I had played.
"They were talking of you at the club last night, Ben," he said. "You
were the only one of us who had sense enough to load up with A. P. & C.
stock when it was selling at 80, and now it's jumped up to 150. Jim
Randolph was fool enough to remark that you'd had the easiest success of
any man he knew."
"Easy? Does he think so?"
"So you call that easy, gentlemen?' I responded. 'Well, I tell you that
boy has sweated for it since he was seven years old. It's the only way,
too, I'm sure of it. If you want to succeed, you've got to begin by
sweating.'"
"Thank you, General, but I suppose most things look easy until you've
tried them."
"It doesn't look easy to me, Ben, when I've seen you at it all day and
half the night since you were a boy. What I said to those fellows at the
club is the Gospel truth--there's but one way to get anything in this
world, and that is by sweating for it."
We were in his study, to which he was confined by an attack of the gout,
and at such times he loved to ramble on in his aging, reminiscent habit.
"You know, General," I said, "that they want me to accept the presidency
of the Union Bank in Jennings' place. I've been one of the directors,
you see, for the last three or four years."
"You'd be the youngest bank president in the country. It's a good thing,
and you'd control enough money to keep you awake at night. But remember,
Ben, as my dear old coloured mammy used to say to me, 'to hatch first
ain't always to crow last.'"
"Do you call it hatching or crowing to become president of the Union
Bank?"
"That depends. If you're shrewd and safe, as I think you are, it may
turn out to be both. It would be a good plan, though, to say to yourself
every time you come up Franklin Street, 'I've toted potatoes up this
hill, and not my own potatoes either.' It's good for you, sir, to
remember it, damned good."
"I'm not likely to forget it--they were heavy."
"It was the best thing that ever happened to you--it was the making of
you. There's nothing I know so good for a man as to be able to remember
that he toted somebody else's potatoes. Now, look at that George of
mine. He never toted a potato in his life--not even his own. If he had,
he might have been a bank president to-day instead of the pleasant,
well-dressed club-man he is, with a mustache like wax-work. I've an
idea, Ben, but don't let it get any farther, that he never got over not
having Sally, and that took the spirit out of him. She's well, ain't
she?"
"Yes, she's very well and more beautiful than ever."
"Hasn't developed any principles yet, eh? I always thought they were in
her."
"None that interfere with my comfort at any rate."
"Keep an eye on her and keep her occupied all the time. That's the way
to deal with a woman who has ideas--don't leave her a blessed minute to
sit down and hatch 'em out. Pet her, dress her, amuse her, and whenever
she begins to talk about a principle, step out and buy her a present to
take her mind off it. Anything no bigger than a thimble will turn a
woman's mind in the right direction if you spring it on her like a
surprise. Ah, that's the way her Aunt Matoaca ought to have been
treated. Poor Miss Matoaca, she went wrong for the want of a little
simple management like that. You never saw Miss Matoaca Bland when she
was a girl, Ben?"
"I have heard she was beautiful."
"Beautiful ain't the word, sir! I tell you the first time I ever saw her
she came to church in a white poke bonnet lined with cherry-coloured
silk, and her cheeks exactly a match to her bonnet lining." He got out
his big silk handkerchief, and blew his nose loudly, after which he
wiped his eyes, and sat staring moodily at his foot bandaged out of all
proportion to its natural size.
"Who'd have thought to look at her then," he pursued, "that she'd go
cracked over this Yankee abolition idea before she died."
"Why, I thought they owned slaves up to the end, General."
"Slaves? What have slaves got to do with it? Ain't the abolitionists and
the woman suffragists and the rest of those damned fire-eating Yankees
all the same? What they want to do is to overturn the Constitution, and
it makes no difference to 'em whether they overturn it under one name or
the other. I tell you, Ben, as sure's my name's George Bolingbroke,
Matoaca Bland couldn't have told me to the day of her death whether she
was an abolitionist or a woman's suffragist. When a woman goes cracked
like that, all she wants is to be a fire-eater, and I doubt if she ever
knows what she is eating it about. Women ain't like men, my boy, there
isn't an ounce of moderation to the whole sex, sir. Why, look at the way
they're always getting their hearts broken or their heads cracked. They
can't feel an emotion or think an idea that something inside of 'em
doesn't begin to split. Now, did you ever hear of a man getting his
heart broken or his brain cracked?"
The canker was still there, doing its bitter work. For forty years Miss
Matoaca had had her revenge, and even in the grave her ghost would not
lie quiet and let him rest. In his watery little eyes and his
protruding, childish lip, I read the story of fruitless excesses and of
vain retaliations.
When I reached home, I found Sally in her upstairs sitting-room with
Jessy, who was trying on an elaborate ball gown of white lace. Since the
two years of mourning were over, the little sister had come to stay with
us, and Sally was filled with generous plans for the girl's pleasure.
Jessy, herself, received it all with her reserved, indifferent manner,
turning her beautiful profile upon us with an expression of saintly
serenity. It amused me sometimes to wonder what was behind the brilliant
red and white of her complexion--what thoughts? what desires? what
impulses? She went so placidly on her way, gaining what she wanted,
executing what she planned, accepting what was offered to her, that
there were moments when I felt tempted to arouse her by a burst of
anger--to discover if a single natural instinct survived the shining
polish of her exterior. Sally had worked a miracle in her manner, her
speech, her dress; and yet in all that time I had never seen the ripple
of an impulse cross the exquisite vacancy of her face. Did she feel? Did
she think? Did she care? I demanded. Once or twice I had spoken of
President, trying to excite a look of gratitude, if not of affection;
but even then no change had come in the mirror-like surface of her blue
eyes. President, I was aware, had sacrificed himself to her while I was
still a child, had slaved and toiled and denied himself that he might
make her a lady. Yet when I asked her if she ever wrote to him, she
smiled quietly and shook her head.
"Why don't you write to him, Jessy? He was always fond of you."
"He writes such dreadful letters--just like a working-man's--that I hate
to get them," she answered, turning to catch the effect of her train in
the long mirror.
"He is a working-man, Jessy, and so am I."
She accepted the statement without demur, as she accepted
everything--neither denying nor disputing, but apparently indifferent to
its truth or falseness. My eyes met Sally's in the glass, and they held
me in a long, compassionate gaze.
"All men are working-men, Jessy, if they are worth anything," she said,
"and any work is good work if it is well done."
"He is a miner," responded Jessy.
"If he is, it is because he prefers to do the work he knows to being
idle," I answered sharply. "What you must remember is that when he had
little, and I had nothing, he gave you freely all that he had."
She did not answer, and for a moment I thought I had convinced her.
"Will you write to President to-night?" I asked.
"But we are having a dinner party. How can I?"
"To-morrow, then?"
"I am going to the theatre with Mrs. Blansford. Mr. Cottrel has taken a
box for her. He is one of the richest men in the West, isn't he?"
"There are a great many rich men in the West. How can it concern you?"
"Oh, it's beautiful to be rich," she returned, in the most enthusiastic
phrase I had ever heard her utter; and gathering her white lace train
over her arm she went into her bedroom to remove the dress.
"What is she made of, Sally?" I asked, in sheer desperation; "flesh and
blood, do you think?"
"I don't know, Ben, not your flesh and blood, certainly."
"But for President--why wasn't my father hanged before he gave him such
a name!--she would have remained ignorant and common with all her
beauty. He almost starved himself in order to send her to a good school
and give her pretty clothes."
"I know, I know, it seems terribly ungrateful--but perhaps she's excited
over her first dinner."
That evening we were to give our first formal dinner, and when I came
downstairs a little before eight o'clock, I found the rooms a bower of
azaleas, over which the pink-shaded lamps shed a light that touched
Jessy's lace gown with pale rose.
"It's like fairyland, isn't it?" she said, "and the table is so
beautiful. Come and see the table."
She led me into the dining-room and we stood gazing down on the
decorations, while we waited for Sally.
"Who is coming, Jessy?"
"Twelve in all. General Bolingbroke and Mr. Bolingbroke, Mrs. Fitzhugh,
Governor Blenner, Miss Page," she went on reading the cards, "Mr. Mason,
Miss Watson, Colonel Henry, Mrs. Preston, Mrs. Tyler--"
"That will do. I'll know them when I see them. Do you like it, Jessy?"
"Yes, I like it. Isn't my dress lovely?"
"Very, but don't get spoiled. You see Sally has had this all her life,
and she isn't spoiled."
"I don't believe she could be," she responded, for her admiration for
Sally was the most human thing I had ever discovered about her, "and
she's so beautiful--more beautiful, I think, than Bonny Page, though of
course nobody would agree with me."
"Well, she's perfect, and she always was and always will be," I
returned.
"You're a great man, aren't you?" she asked suddenly, turning away from
the table.
"Why, no. What in the world put that into your head?"
"Well, the General told Mr. Cottrel you were a genius, and Mr. Cottrel
said you were the first genius he had ever heard of who measured six
feet two in his stockings."
"Of course I'm not a genius. They were joking."
"You're rich anyway, and that's just as good."
I was about to make some sharp rejoinder, irritated by her insistence on
the distinction of wealth, when the sound of Sally's step fell on my
ears, and a moment later she came down the brilliantly lighted
staircase, her long black lace train rippling behind her. As she moved
among the lamps and azaleas, I thought I had never seen her more
radiant--not even on the night of her first party when she wore the
white rose in her wreath of plaits. Her hair was arranged to-night in
the same simple fashion, her mouth was as vivid, her grey eyes held the
same mingling of light with darkness. But there was a deeper serenity in
her face, brought there by the untroubled happiness of her marriage, and
her figure had grown fuller and nobler, as if it had moulded itself to
the larger and finer purposes of life.
"The house is charming, Jessy is lovely, and you, Ben, are magnificent,"
she said, her eyebrows arching merrily as she slipped her hand in my
arm. "And it's a good dinner, too," she went on; "the terrapin is
perfect. I sent into the country for the game, and the man from
Washington came down with the decorations and the ices. Best of all, I
made the salad myself, so be sure to eat it. We'll begin to be gay now,
shan't we? Are you sure we have money enough for a ball?"
"We've money enough for anything that you want, Sally."
"Then I'll spend it--but oh! Ben, promise me you won't mention stocks
to-night until the women have left the table."
"I'll promise you, and keep it, too. I don't believe I ever introduced a
subject in my life to any woman but you."
"I'm glad, at least, there's one subject you didn't introduce to any
other."
Then the door-bell rang, and we hurried into the drawing-room in time to
receive Governor Blenner and the General, who arrived together.
"I almost got a fall on your pavement, Ben," said the General, "it's
beginning to sleet. You'd better have some sawdust down."
It took me a few minutes to order the sawdust, and when I returned, the
other guests were already in the room, and Sally was waiting to go in to
dinner on the arm of Governor Blenner, a slim, nervous-looking man, with
a long iron-grey mustache. I took in Mrs. Tyler, a handsome widow, with
a young face and snow-white hair, and we were no sooner seated than she
began to tell me a story she had heard about me that morning.
"Carry James told me she gave her little boy a penny and asked him what
he meant to do with it. 'Ath Mithter Starr to thurn it into, a
quarther,' he replied."
"Oh, he thinks that easy now, but he'll find out differently some day,"
I returned.
She nodded brightly, with the interested, animated manner of a woman who
realises that the burden of conversation lies, not on the man's
shoulders, but on hers. While she ate her soup I knew that her alert
mind was working over the subject which she intended to introduce with
the next course. From the other end of the table Sally's eyes were
raised to mine over the basket of roses and lilies. Jessy was listening
to George Bolingbroke, who was telling a story about the races, while
his eyes rested on Sally, with a dumb, pained look that made me suddenly
feel very sorry for him. I knew that he still loved her, but until I saw
that look in his eyes I had never understood what the loss of her must
have meant in his life. Suppose I had lost her, and he had won, and I
had sat and stared at her across her own dinner table with my secret
written in my eyes for her husband to read. A fierce sense of possession
swept over me, and I felt angered because his longing gaze was on her
flushed cheeks and bare shoulders.
"No, no wine. I've drunk my last glass of wine unless I may hope for it
in heaven," I heard the General say; "a little Scotch whiskey now and
then will see me safely to my grave."
"From champagne to Scotch whiskey was a flat fall, General," observed
Mrs. Tyler, my sprightly neighbour.
"It's not so flat as the fall to Lithia water, though," retorted the
General.
I was about to join vacantly in the laugh, when a sound in the doorway
caused me to lift my eyes from my plate, and the next instant I sat
paralysed by the figure that towered there over the palms and azaleas.
"Why, Benjy boy!" cried a voice, in a tone of joyous surprise, and while
every head turned instantly in the direction of the words, the candles
and the roses swam in a blur of colour before my eyes. Standing on the
threshold, between two flowering azaleas, with a palm branch waving
above his head, was President, my brother, who was a miner. Twenty years
ago I had last seen him, and though he was rougher and older and greyer
now, he had the same honest blue eyes and the same kind, sheepish face.
The clothes he wore were evidently those in which he dressed himself for
church on Sunday, and they made him ten times more awkward, ten times
more ill at ease, than he would have looked in his suit of jeans.
"Why, Benjy boy!" he burst out again; "and little Jessy!"
I sprang to my feet, while a hot wave swept over me at the thought that
for a single dreadful instant I had been ashamed of my brother. Already
I had pushed back my chair, but before I could move from my place, Sally
had walked the length of the table, and stood, tall and queenly, between
the flowering azaleas, with her hand outstretched. There was no shame in
her face, no embarrassment, no hesitation. Before I could speak she had
turned and come back to us, with her arm through President's, and never
in my eyes had she appeared so noble, so high-bred, so thoroughly a
Bland and a Fairfax as she did at that moment.
"Governor, this is my brother, Mr. Starr," she said in her low, clear
voice. "Ben has not seen him for twenty years, so if you will pardon
him, he will go upstairs with him to his room."
As I went toward her my glance swept the table for Jessy, and I saw that
she was sitting perfectly still and colourless, crumbling a small piece
of bread, while her eyes clung to the basket of roses and lilies.
"Well, Benjy boy!" exclaimed President, too full for speech, "and little
Jessy!"
In spite of his awkwardness and his Sunday clothes, he looked so happy,
so uplifted by the sincerity of his affection above any false feeling of
shame, that the tears sprang to my eyes as I clasped his hand.
The governor had risen to speak to him, the General had done likewise.
By their side Sally stood with a smile on her face and her hand on the
table. She was a Bland, after all, and the racial instinct within her
had risen to meet the crisis. They recognised it, I saw, and they, whose
blood was as blue as hers, responded generously to the call. Not one had
failed her! Then my eyes fell on Jessy, sitting cold and silent, while
she crumbled her bit of bread.
CHAPTER XXII
THE MAN AND THE CLASS
"I oughtn't to have done it, Benjy," said President, following me with
diffidence under the waving palm branches and up the staircase.
"Nonsense, President," I answered; "I'm awfully glad you've come. Only
if I'd known about it, I'd have met you at the station."
"No, I oughtn't to have done it, Benjy," he repeated humbly, standing in
a dejected attitude in the centre of the guest room next to Jessy's. He
had entered nervously, as if he were stepping on glass, and when I
motioned to a chair he shook his head and glanced uneasily at the
delicate chintz covering.
"I'd better not sit down. I'm feared I'll hurt it."
"It's made to be sat in. You aren't going to stand up in the middle of
the room all night, old fellow, are you?"
At this he appeared to hesitate, and a pathetic groping showed itself in
his large, good-humoured face.
"You see, I've been down in the mines," he said, "an' anything so fancy
makes my flesh crawl."
"I wish you'd give up that work. It's a shame to have you do it when
I've got more money than I can find investments for."
"I'm a worker, Benjy, and I'll die a worker. Pa wa'nt a worker, and
that's why he took to drink."
"Well, sit down now, and make yourself at home. I've got to go back
downstairs, but I'll come up again the very minute that it's over."
Pushing him, in spite of his stubborn, though humble, resistance, into
the depths of the chintz-covered chair, I went hurriedly back to the
dinner-table, and took my seat beside Mrs. Tyler, who remarked with a
tact which won me completely:--
"Mrs. Starr has been telling us such interesting things about your
brother. He has a very fine head."
"By George, I'm glad I shook his hand," said the General, in his loud,
kindly way. "Bring him to see me, Ben, I like a worker."
The terrible minute in which I had sat there, paralysed by the shame of
acknowledging him, was still searing my mind. As I met Sally's eyes over
the roses and lilies, I wondered if she had seen my cowardliness as I
had seen Jessy's, and been repelled by it? When the dinner was over, and
the last guest had gone, I asked myself the question again while I went
upstairs to bring my brother from his retirement. As I opened the door,
he started up from the chair in which I had placed him, and began
rubbing his eyes as he followed me timidly out of the room. At the table
Sally seated herself opposite to him, and talked in her simple, kindly
manner while he ate his dinner.
"Pour his wine, Ben," she said, dismissing the butler, "there are too
many frivolities, aren't there? I like a clear space, too."
Turning toward him she pushed gently away the confusing decorations, and
removed the useless number of forks from beside his plate. If the way he
ate his soup and drank his wine annoyed her, there was no hint of it in
her kind eyes and her untroubled smile. She, who was sensitive to the
point of delicacy, I knew, watched him crumble his bread into his green
turtle, and gulp down his sherry, with a glance which apparently was
oblivious of the thing at which it looked. Jessy shrank gradually away,
confessing presently that she had a headache and would like to go
upstairs to bed; and when she kissed President's cheek, I saw aversion
written in every line of her shrinking figure. Yet opposite to him sat
Sally, who was a Bland and a Fairfax, and not a tremor, not the flicker
of an eyelash, disturbed her friendly and charming expression. What was
the secret of that exquisite patience, that perfect courtesy, which was
confirmed by the heart, not by the lips? Did the hidden cause of it lie
in the fact that it was not a manner, after all, but the very essence of
a character, whose ruling spirit was exhaustless sympathy?
"I've told Benjy, ma'am," said President, selecting the largest fork by
some instinct for appropriateness, "that I know I oughtn't to have done
it."
"To have done what?" repeated Sally kindly.
"That I oughtn't to have come in on a party like that dressed as I am,
and I so plain and uneddicated."
"You mustn't worry," she answered, bending forward in all the
queenliness of her braided wreath and her bare shoulders, "you mustn't
worry--not for a minute. It was natural that you should come to your
brother at once, and, of course, we want you to stay with us."
I had never seen her fail when social intuition guided her, and she did
not fail now. He glanced down at his clothes in a pleased, yet
hesitating, manner.
"These did very well on Sunday in Pocahontas," he said, "but somehow
they don't seem to suit here; I reckon so many flowers and lights kind
of dazzle my eyes."
"They do perfectly well," answered Sally, speaking in a firm, direct way
as if she were talking to a child; "but if you would feel more
comfortable in some of Ben's clothes, he has any number of them at your
service. He is about your height, is he not?"
"To think of little Benjy growin' so tall," he remarked with a kind of
ecstasy, and when we went into the library for a smoke, he insisted upon
measuring heights with me against the ledge of the door. Then, alone
with me and the cheerful crackling of the log fire, his embarrassment
disappeared, and he began to ask a multitude of eager questions about
myself and Jessy and my marriage.
"And so pa died," he remarked sadly, between the long whiffs of his
pipe.
"I'm not sure it wasn't the best thing he ever did," I responded.
"Well, you see, Benjy, he wa'nt a worker, and when a man ain't a worker
there's mighty little to stand between him and drink. Now, ma, she was a
worker."
"And we got it from her. That's why we hate to be idle, I suppose."
"Did it ever strike you, Benjy," he enquired solemnly, after a minute,
"that in the marriage of ma and pa the breeches were on the wrong one of
'em? Pa wa'nt much of a man, but he would have made a female that we
could have been proud of. With all the good working qualities, we never
could be proud of ma when we considered her as a female."
"Well, I don't know, but I think she was the best we ever had."
"We are proud of Jessy," he pursued reflectively.
"Yes, we are proud of Jessy," I repeated, and as I uttered the words, I
remembered her beautiful blighted look, while she sat cold and silent,
crumbling her bit of bread.
"And we are proud of you, Benjy," he added, "but you ain't any
particular reason to be proud of me. You can't be proud of a man that
ain't had an eddication."
"Well, the education doesn't make the man, you know."
"It does a good deal towards it. The stuffing goes a long way with the
goose, as poor ma used to say. Do you ever think what ma would have been
if she'd had an eddication? An eddication and breeches would have made a
general of her. It must take a powerful lot of patience to stand being
born a female."
He took a wad of tobacco from his pocket, eyed it timidly, and after
glancing at the tiled hearth, put it back again.
"You know what I would do if I were a rich man, Benjy?" he said; "I'd
buy a railroad."
"You'd have to be a very rich man, indeed, to do that."
"It's a little dead-beat road, the West Virginia and Wyanoke. I
overheard two gentlemen talking about it yesterday in Pocahontas, and
one of 'em had been down to look at those worked-out coal fields at
Wyanoke. 'If I wa'nt in as many schemes as I could float, I'd buy up a
control of that road,' said the one who had been there, 'you mark my
words, there's better coal in those fields than has ever come out of
'em.' They called him Huntley, and he said he'd been down with an
expert."
"Huntley?" I caught at the name, for he was one of the shrewdest
promoters in the South. "If he thinks that, why didn't he get control of
the road himself?"
"The other wanted him to. He said the time would come when they tapped
the coal fields that the Great South Midland and Atlantic would want the
little road as a feeder."
"So he believed the Wyanoke coal fields weren't worked out, eh?"
"He said they wa'nt even developed. You see it was all a secret, and
they didn't pay any attention to me, because I was just a common miner."
"And couldn't buy a railroad. Well, President, if it comes to anything,
you shall have your share. Meanwhile, I'll run out to Wyanoke and look
around."
With the idea still in my mind, I went into the General's office next
day, and told him that I had decided to accept the presidency of the
Union Bank.
"Well, I'm sorry to lose you, Ben. Perhaps you'll come back to the road
in another capacity when I am dead. It will be a bigger road then. We're
buying up the Tennessee and Carolina, you know."
"It's a great road you've made, General, and I like to serve it. By the
way, I'm going to West Virginia in a day or two to have a look at the
West Virginia and Wyanoke. What do you know of the coal fields at
Wyanoke?"
"No 'count ones. I wouldn't meddle with that little road if I were you.
It will go bankrupt presently, and then we'll buy it, I suppose, at our
own price. It runs through scrub land populated by old field pines. How
is that miner brother of yours, Ben? I saw Sally at the theatre with
him. You've got a jewel, my boy, there's no doubt of that. When I looked
at her sailing down the room on his arm last night, by George, I wished
I was forty years younger and married to her myself."
Some hours later I repeated his remark to Sally, when I went home at
dusk and found her sitting before a wood fire in her bedroom, with her
hat and coat on, just as she had dropped there after a drive with
President.
"Well, I wouldn't have the General at any age. You needn't be jealous,
Ben," she responded. "I'm too much like Aunt Matoaca."
"He always said you were," I retorted, "but, oh, Sally, you are an
angel! When I saw you rise at dinner last night, I wanted to squeeze you
in my arms and kiss you before them all."
The little scar by her mouth dimpled with the old childish expression of
archness.
"Suppose you do it now, sir," she rejoined, with the primness of Miss
Mitty, and a little later, "What else was there to do but rise, you
absurd boy? Poor mamma used to tell me that grandpapa always said to
her, 'When in doubt choose the kindest way.'"
"And yet he disinherited his favourite daughter."
"Which only proves, my dear, how much easier it is to make a proverb
than to practise it."
"Do you know, Sally," I began falteringly, after a minute, "there is
something I ought to tell you, and that is, that when I looked up at the
table last night and saw President in the doorway, my first feeling was
one of shame."
She rubbed her cheek softly against my sleeve.
"Shall I confess something just as dreadful?" she asked. "When I looked
up and saw him standing there my first feeling was exactly the same."
"Sally, I am so thankful."
"You wicked creature, to want me to be as bad as yourself."
"It couldn't have lasted with you but a second."
"It didn't, but a second is an hour in the mind of a snob."
"Well, we were both snobs together, and that's some comfort, anyway."
For the three days that President remained with us he wore my clothes,
in which he looked more than ever like a miner attired for church, and
carried himself with a resigned and humble manner.
Sally took him to the theatre and to drive with her in the afternoon,
and I carried him to the General's office and over the Capitol, which he
surveyed with awed and admiring eyes. Only Jessy still shrank from him,
and not once during his visit were we able to prevail upon her to appear
with him in the presence of strangers. There was always an excuse ready
to trip off her tongue--she had a headache, she was going to the
dressmaker's, the milliner's, the dentist's even; and I honestly believe
that she sought cheerfully this last place of torture as an escape. To
the end, however, he regarded her with an affection that fell little
short of adoration.
"Who'd have thought that little Jessy would have shot up into a regular
beauty!" he exclaimed for the twentieth time as he stood ready to
depart. "She takes arter pa, and I always said the only thing against pa
was that he wa'nt born a female."
He kissed her good-by in a reverential fashion, and after a cordial,
though exhausted, leave-taking from Sally, we went together to West
Virginia. In spite of the General's advice, I had decided to take a look
at the coal fields of Wyanoke, and a week later, when I returned to
Richmond, I was the owner of a control of the little West Virginia and
Wyanoke Railroad. It was a long distance from the presidency of the
Great South Midland and Atlantic, but I watched still from some vantage
ground in my imagination, the gleaming tracks of the big road sweeping
straight on to the southern horizon.
For the next few years there was hardly a shadow on the smiling surface
of our prosperity. Society had received us in spite of my father, in
spite even of my brother; and the day that had made me Sally's husband
had given me a place, if an alien one, in the circle in which she moved.
I was there at last, and it was neither her fault nor mine if I carried
with me into that stained-glass atmosphere something of the
consciousness of the market boy, who seemed to stand always at the
kitchen door. Curiously enough there were instants even now when I felt
vaguely aware that, however large I might appear to loom in my physical
presence, a part of me was, in reality, still on the outside, hovering
uncertainly beyond the threshold. There were things I had never
learned--would never learn; things that belonged so naturally to the
people with whom I lived that they seemed only aware of them when
brought face to face with the fact of their absence. The lightness of
life taught me nothing except that I was built in mind and in body upon
a heavier plan. At the dinner-table, when the airy talk floated about
me, I felt again and again that the sparkling trivialities settled like
thistledown upon the solid mass I presented, and remained there because
of my native inability to waft them back. It was still as impossible for
me to entertain pretty girls in pink tarlatan as it had been on the
night of my first party; and the memory of that disastrous social
episode stung me at times when I stood large and awkward before a gay
and animated maiden, or sat wedged in, like a massive block, between two
patient and sleepy mothers. These people were all Sally's friends, not
mine, and it was for her sake, I never forgot for a minute, that they
had accepted me. With just such pleasant condescension they would still
have accepted me, I knew, if I had, in truth, entered their company with
my basket of potatoes or carrots on my arm. One alone held out
unwaveringly through the years; for Miss Mitty, shut with her pride and
her portraits in the old grey house, obstinately closed her big mahogany
doors against our repeated friendly advances. Sometimes at dusk, as I
passed on the crooked pavement under the two great sycamores, I would
glance up at the windows, where the red firelight glimmered on the small
square panes, and fancy that I saw her long, oval face gazing down on me
from between the parted lace curtains. But she made no sign of
forgiveness, and when Sally went to see her, as she did sometimes, the
old lady received her formally in the drawing-room, with a distant and
stately manner. She, who was the mixture of a Bland and a Fairfax, sat
enthroned upon her traditions, while we of the common, outside world
walked by under the silvery boughs of her sycamores.
"Aunt Mitty has told Selim not to admit me," said Sally one day at
luncheon. "I know she wasn't out in this dreadful March wind--she never
leaves the house except in summer--and yet when I went there, he told me
positively she was not at home. When I think of her all alone hour after
hour with Aunt Matoaca's things around her, I feel as if it would break
my heart. George says she is looking very badly."
"Does George see her?" I asked, glancing up from my cup of coffee, while
I waited for the light to a cigar. "I didn't imagine he had enough
attentions left over from his hunters to bestow upon maiden ladies."
The sugar tongs were in her hand, and she looked not at me, but at the
lump of sugar poised above her cup, as she answered,
"He is so good."
"Good?" I echoed lightly; "do you call George good? The General thinks
he's a sad scamp."
The lump of sugar dropped with a splash into her cup, and her eyes were
dark as she raised them quickly to my face. Instinctively I felt, with a
blind groping of perception, that I had wounded her pride, or her
loyalty, or some other hereditary attribute of the Blands and the
Fairfaxes that I could not comprehend.
"If I wanted an estimate of goodness, I don't think I'd go to the
General as an authority," she retorted.
"I'm sorry you never liked him, Sally. He's a great man."
"Well, he isn't _my_ great man anyway," she retorted. "I prefer Dr.
Theophilus or George."
I laughed gayly. "The doctor is a mollycoddle and George is a fop." My
tone was jaunty, yet her words were like the prick of a needle in a
sensitive place. What was her praise of George except the confession of
an appreciation of the very things that I could never possess? I knew
she loved me and not George--was not her marriage a proof of this
sufficient to cover a lifetime?--yet I knew also that the external
graces which I treated with scorn because I lacked them, held for her
the charm of habit, of association, of racial memory. Would the power in
me that had captured her serve as well through a future of familiar
possession as it had served in the supreme moment of conquest? I could
not go through life, as I had once said, forever pushing a wheel up a
hill, and the strength of a shoulder might prove, after all, less
effective in the freedom of daily intercourse than the quickness or
delicacy of a manner. Would she begin to regret presently, I wondered,
the lack in the man she loved of those smaller virtues which in the
first rosy glow of romance had seemed to her insignificant and of little
worth?
"There are worse things than a mollycoddle or a fop," she rejoined after
a pause, and added quickly, while old Esdras left the dining-room to
answer a ring at the bell, "That's either Bonny Page or George now. One
of them is coming to take me out."
For a moment I hoped foolishly that the visitor might be Bonny Page, but
the sound of George's pleasant drawling voice was heard speaking to old
Esdras, and as the curtains swung back, he crossed the threshold and
came over to take Sally's outstretched hand.
"You're lunching late to-day," he said. "I don't often find you here at
this hour, Ben."
"No, I'm not a man-about-town like you," I replied, pushing the cigars
and the lamp toward him; "the business of living takes up too much of my
time."
He leaned over, without replying to me, his hand on the back of Sally's
chair, his eyes on her face.
"It's all right, Sally," he said in a low voice, and when he drew back,
I saw that he had laid a spray of sweet alyssum on the table beside her
plate.
Her eyes shone suddenly as if she were looking at sunlight, and when she
smiled up at him, there was an expression in her face, half gratitude,
half admiration, that made it very beautiful. While I watched her, I
tried to overcome an ugly irrational resentment because George had been
the one to call that tremulous new beauty into existence.
"How like you it was," she returned, almost in a whisper, with the spray
of sweet alyssum held to her lips, "and how can I thank you?"
His slightly wooden features, flushed now with a fine colour, as if he
had been riding in the March wind, softened until I hardly knew them.
Standing there in his immaculate clothes, with his carefully groomed
mustache hiding a trembling mouth, he had become, I realised vaguely, a
George with whom the General and I possessed hardly so much as an
acquaintance. The man before me was a man whom Sally had invoked into
being, and it seemed to me, as I watched them, that she had awakened in
George, who had lost her, some quality--inscrutable and elusive--that
she had never aroused in the man to whom she belonged. What this quality
was, or wherein it lay, I could not then define. Understanding,
sympathy, perception, none of these words covered it, yet it appeared to
contain and possess them all. The mere fact of its existence, and that I
recognised without explaining it, had the effect of a barrier which
separated me for the moment from my wife and the man to whom she was
related by the ties of race and of class. Again I was aware of that
sense of strangeness, of remoteness, which I had felt on the night of
our home-coming when I had stood, spellbound, before Bonny Page's
exquisite grooming and the shining gloss on her hair and boots.
Something--a trifle, perhaps, had passed between Sally and George--and
the reason I did not understand it was because I belonged to another
order and had inherited different perceptions from theirs. The
trifle--whatever it was--appeared visibly, I knew, before us; it was
evident and on the surface, and if I failed to discern it what did that
prove except the shortness of the vision through which I looked? A
physical soreness, like that of a new bruise, attacked my heart, and
rising hastily from the table, I made some hurried apology and went out,
leaving them alone together. Glancing back as I got into my overcoat in
the hall, I saw that Sally still held the spray of sweet alyssum to her
lips, and that the look George bent on her was transfigured by the
tenderness that flooded his face with colour. She loved me, she was
mine, and yet at this instant she had turned to another man for a keener
comprehension, a subtler sympathy, than I could give. A passion, not of
jealousy, but of hurt pride, throbbed in my heart, and by some curious
eccentricity of emotion, this pride was associated with a rush of
ambition, with the impelling desire to succeed to the fullest in the
things in which success was possible. If I could not give what George
gave, I would give, I told myself passionately, something far better.
When the struggle came closer between the class and the individual, I
had little doubt that the claims of tradition would yield as they had
always done to the possession of power. Only let that power find its
fullest expression, and I should stand to George Bolingbroke as the
living present of action stands to the dead past of history. After all,
what I had to give was my own, hewn by my own strength out of life,
while the thing in which he excelled was merely a web of delicate fibre
woven by generations of hands that had long since crumbled to dust.
Triumph over him, I resolved that I would in the end, and the way to
triumph led, I knew, through a future of outward achievement to the
dazzling presidency of the South Midland and Atlantic Railroad.
As time went on this passionate ambition, which was so closely bound up
with my love for Sally, absorbed me even to the exclusion of the feeling
from which it had drawn its greatest strength. The responsibilities of
my position, the partial control of the large sums of money that passed
through my hands, crowded my days with schemes and anxieties, and kept
me tossing, sleepless yet with wearied brain, through many a night. For
pleasure I had no time; Sally I saw only for a hurried or an
absent-minded hour or two at meals, or when I came up too tired to think
or to talk in the evenings. Often I fell asleep over my cigar after
dinner, while she dressed and hastened, with her wreathed head and bare
shoulders, to a reception or a ball. A third of my time was spent in New
York, and during my absence, it never occurred to me to enquire how she
filled her long, empty days. She was sure of me, she trusted me, I knew;
and in the future, I told myself when I had leisure to think of it--next
year, perhaps--I should begin again to play the part of an ardent lover.
She was as desirable--she was far dearer to me than she had ever been in
her life, but while I held her safe and close in my clasp, my mind
reached out with its indomitable energy after the uncertain, the
unattained. I had my wife--what I wanted now was a fortune and a great
name to lay at her feet.
And all these months did she ever question, ever ask herself, while she
watched me struggling day after day with the lust for power, if the
thing that I sought to give her would in the end turn to Dead Sea fruit
at her lips? Question she may have done in her heart, but no hint of it
ever reached me--no complaint of her marriage ever disturbed the outward
serenity in which we lived. Yet, deep in myself, I heard always a still
small voice, which told me that she demanded something far subtler and
finer than I had given--something that belonged inherently to the nature
of George Bolingbroke rather than to mine. Even now, though she loved me
and not George, it was George who was always free, who was always
amiable, who was always just ready and just waiting to be called. On
another day, a month or two later, he came in again with his blossom of
sweet alyssum, and again her eyes grew shining and grateful, while the
old bruise throbbed quickly to life in my heart.
"Is it all right still?" she asked, and he answered, "All right," with
his rare smile, which lent a singular charm to his softened features.
Then he glanced across at me and made, I realised, an effort to be
friendly.
"You ought to get a horse, Ben," he remarked, "it would keep you from
getting glum. If you'd hunted with us yesterday, you would have seen
Bonny Page take a gate like a bird."
"I tried to follow," said Sally, "but Prince Charlie refused."
"You mean I wouldn't let go your bridle," returned George, in a
half-playful, half-serious tone.
The bruise throbbed again. Here, also, I was shut out--I who had carried
potatoes to George's door while he was off learning to follow the
hounds. His immaculate, yet careless, dress; the perfection of his
manner, which seemed to make him a part of the surroundings in which he
stood; the very smoothness and slenderness of the hand that rested on
Sally's chair--all these produced in me a curious and unreasonable
sensation of anger.
"I forbid you to jump, Sally," I said, almost sharply; "you know I hate
it."
She leaned forward, glancing first at me and then at George, with an
expression of surprise.
"Why, what's the matter, Ben?" she asked. "He's a perfect bear, isn't
he, George?"
"The best way to keep her from jumping," observed George, pleasantly
enough, though his face flushed, "is to be on the spot to catch her
bridle or her horse's mane or anything else that's handy. It's the only
means I've found successful, for there was never a Bland yet who didn't
go straight ahead and do the thing he was forbidden to. Miss Mitty told
me with pride that she had been eating lobster, which she always hated,
and I discovered her only reason was that the doctor had ordered her not
to touch it."
"Then I shan't forbid, I'll entreat," I replied, recovering myself with
an effort. "Please don't jump, Sally, I implore it."
"I won't jump if you'll come with me, Ben," she answered.
I laughed shortly, for how was it possible to explain to two Virginians
of their blood and habits that a man of six feet two inches could not
sit a horse for the first time without appearing ridiculous in the eyes
even of the woman who loved him? They had grown up together in the
fields or at the stables, and a knowledge of horse-flesh was as much a
part of their birthright as the observance of manners. The one I could
never acquire; the other I had attained unaided and in the face of the
tremendous barriers that shut me out. The repeated insistence upon the
fact that Sally was a Bland aroused in me, whenever I met it, an
irritation which I tried in vain to dispel. To be a Bland meant, after
all, simply to be removed as far as possible from any temperamental
relation to the race of Starrs.
"I wish I could, dear," I answered, as I rose to go out, "but remember,
I've never been on a horse in my life and it's too late to begin."
"Oh, I forgot. Of course you can't," she rejoined. "So if George isn't
strong enough to hold me back, I'll have to go straight after Bonny."
"I promise you I'll swing on with all my might, Ben," said George, with
a laugh in which I felt there was an amiable condescension, as from the
best horseman in his state to a man who had never ridden to hounds.
A little later, as I walked down the street, past the old grey house,
under the young budding leaves of the sycamores, the recollection of
this amiable condescension returned to me like the stab of a knife. The
image of Sally, mounted on Prince Charlie, at George's side, troubled my
thoughts, and I wondered, with a pang, if the people who saw them
together would ask themselves curiously why she had chosen me. To one
and all of them,--to Miss Mitty, to Bonny Page, to Dr. Theophilus,--the
mystery, I felt, was as obscure to-day as it had been in the beginning
of our love. Why was it? I questioned angrily, and wherein lay the
subtle distinction which divided my nature from George Bolingbroke's and
even from Sally's? The forces of democracy had made way for me, and yet
was there something stronger than democracy--and this something, fine
and invincible as a blade, I had felt long ago in the presence of Miss
Mitty and Miss Matoaca. Over my head, under the spreading boughs of the
sycamore, a window was lifted, and between the parted lace curtains, the
song of Miss Mitty's canary floated out into the street. As the music
entered my thoughts, I remembered suddenly the box of sweet alyssum
blooming on the window-sill under the swinging cage, and there flashed
into my consciousness the meaning of the flowers George had laid beside
Sally's plate. For her sake he had gone to Miss Mitty in the sad old
house, and that little blossom was the mute expression of a service he
had rendered joyfully in the name of love. The gratitude in Sally's eyes
was made clear to me, and a helpless rage at my own blindness, my own
denseness, flooded my heart. George, because of some inborn fineness of
perception, had discerned the existence of a sorrow in my wife to which
I, the man whom she loved and who loved her, had been insensible. He had
understood and had comforted--while I, engrossed in larger matters, had
gone on my way unheeding and indifferent. Then the anger against myself
turned blindly upon George, and I demanded passionately if he would
stand forever in my life as the embodiment of instincts and perceptions
that the generations had bred? Would I fail forever in little things
because I had been cursed at birth by an inability to see any except big
ones? And where I failed would George be always ready to fill the
unspoken need and to bestow the unasked-for sympathy?
CHAPTER XXIII
IN WHICH I WALK ON THIN ICE
On a November evening, when we had been married several years, I came
home after seven o'clock, and found Sally standing before the bureau
while she fastened a bunch of violets to the bosom of her gown.
"I'm sorry I couldn't get up earlier, but there's a good deal of
excitement over a failure in Wall Street," I said. "Are you going out?"
Her hands fell from her bosom, and as she turned toward me, I saw that
she was dressed as though for a ball.
"Not to-night, Ben. I had an engagement, but I broke it because I wanted
to spend the evening with you. I thought we might have a nice cosy time
all by ourselves."
"What a shame, darling. I've promised Bradley I'd do a little work with
him in my study. He's coming at half-past eight and will probably keep
me till midnight. I'll have to hurry. Did you put on that gorgeous gown
just for me?"
"Just for you." There was an expression on her face, half humorous, half
resentful, that I had never seen there before. "What day is this, Ben?"
she asked, as I was about to enter my dressing-room.
"The nineteenth of November," I replied carelessly, looking back at her
with my hand on the door.
"The nineteenth of November," she echoed slowly, as if saying the words
to herself.
I was already on the threshold when light broke on me in a flash, and I
turned, blind with remorse, and seized her in my arms.
"Sally, Sally, I am a brute!"
She laughed a little, drawing away, not coming closer.
"Ben, are you happy?"
"As happy as a king. I'll telephone Bradley not to come."
"Is it important?"
"Yes, very important. That failure I told you of is a pretty serious
matter."
"Then let him come. All days are the same, after all, when one comes to
think of it."
Her hand went to the violets at her breast, and as my eyes followed it,
a sudden intuitive dread entered my mind like an impulse of rage.
"I intended to send you flowers, Sally, but in the rush, I forgot. Whose
are those you are wearing?"
She moved slightly, and the perfume of the violets floated from the
cloud of lace on her bosom.
"George sent them," she answered quietly.
Before she spoke I had known it--the curse of my life was to be that
George would always remember--and the intuitive dread I had felt
changed, while I stood there, to the dull ache of remorse.
"Take them off, and I'll get you others if there's a shop open in the
city," I said. Then, as she hesitated, wavering between doubt and
surprise, I left the room, descended the steps with a rush, and picking
up my hat, hurried in search of a belated florist who had not closed. At
the corner a man, going out to dine, paused to fasten his overcoat under
the electric light, which blazed fitfully in the wind; and as I
approached and he looked up, I saw that it was George Bolingbroke.
"It's time all sober married men were at home dressing for dinner," he
observed in a whimsical tone.
The wind had brought a glow of colour into his face, and he looked very
handsome as he stood there, in his fur-lined coat, under the blaze of
light.
"I was kept late down town," I replied. "The General and I get all the
hard knocks while you take it easy."
"Well, I like an easy world, and I believe your world is pretty much
about what you make it. Where are you rushing? Do you go my way?"
"No, I'm turning off here. There's something I forgot this morning and I
came out to attend to it."
"Don't fall into the habit of forgetting. It's a bad one and it's sure
to grow on you--and whatever you forget," he added with a laugh as we
parted, "don't forget for a minute of your life that you've married
Sally."
He passed on, still laughing pleasantly, and quickening my steps, I went
to the corner of Broad Street, where I found a florist's shop still
lighted and filled with customers. There were no violets left, and while
I waited for a sheaf of pink roses, with my eyes on the elaborate
funeral designs covering the counter, I heard a voice speaking in a low
tone beyond a mass of flowering azalea beside which I stood.
"Yes, her mother married beneath her, also," it said; "that seems to be
the unfortunate habit of the Blands."
I turned quickly, my face hot with anger, and as I did so my eyes met
those of a dark, pale lady, through the thick rosy clusters of the
azalea. When she recognised me, she flushed slightly, and then moving
slowly around the big green tub that divided us, she held out her hand
with a startled and birdlike flutter of manner.
"I missed you at the reception last night, Mr. Starr," she said; "Sally
was there, and I had never seen her looking so handsome."
Then as the sheaf of roses was handed to me, she vanished behind the
azaleas again, while I turned quickly away and carried my fragrant
armful out into the night.
When I reached home, I was met on the staircase by Jessy, who ran,
laughing, before me to Sally, with the remark that I had come back
bringing an entire rose garden in my hands.
"There weren't any violets left, darling," I said, as I entered and
tossed the flowers on the couch, "and even these roses aren't fresh."
"Well, they're sweet anyway, poor things," she returned, gathering them
into her lap, while her hands caressed the half-opened petals. "It was
like you, Ben, when you did remember, to bring me the whole shopful."
Breaking one from the long stem, she fastened it in place of the violets
in the cloud of lace on her bosom.
"Pink suits me better, after all," she remarked gayly; "and now you must
let Bradley come, and Jessy and I will go to the theatre."
"I suppose he'll have to come," I said moodily, "but I'll be up earlier
to-morrow, Sally, if I wreck the bank in order to do it."
All the next day I kept the importance of fulfilling this promise in my
mind, and at five o'clock, I abruptly broke off a business appointment
to rush breathlessly home in the hope of finding Sally ready to walk or
to drive. As I turned the corner, however, I saw, to my disappointment,
that several riding horses were waiting under the young maples beside
the pavement, and when I entered the house, I heard the merry flutelike
tones of Bonny Page from the long drawing-room, where Sally was serving
tea.
For a minute the unconquerable shyness I always felt in the presence of
women held me, rooted in silence, on the threshold. Then, "Is that you,
Ben?" floated to me in Sally's voice, and pushing the curtains aside, I
entered the room and crossed to the little group gathered before the
fire. In the midst of it, I saw the tall, almost boyish figure of Bonny
Page, and the sight of her gallant air and her brilliant, vivacious
smile aroused in me instantly the oppressive self-consciousness of our
first meeting. I remembered suddenly that I had dressed carelessly in
the morning, that I had tied my cravat in a hurry, that my coat fitted
me badly and I had neglected to send it back. All the innumerable
details of life--the little things I despised or overlooked--swarmed,
like stinging gnats, into my thoughts while I stood there.
"You're just in time for tea, Ben," said Sally; "it's a pity you don't
drink it."
"And you're just in time for a scolding," remarked Bonny. "Do you know,
if I had a husband who wouldn't ride with me, I'd gallop off the first
time I went hunting with another man."
"You'd better start, Ben. It wouldn't take you three days to follow
Bonny over a gate," said Ned Marshall, one of her many lovers, eager, I
detected at once, to appear intimate and friendly. He was a fine,
strong, athletic young fellow, with a handsome, smooth-shaven face, a
slightly vacant laugh, and a figure that showed superbly in his
loose-fitting riding clothes.
"When I get the time, I'll buy a horse and begin," I replied; "but all
hours are working hours to me now, Sally will tell you."
"It's exactly as if I'd married a railroad engine," remarked Sally,
laughing, and I realised by the strained look in their faces, that this
absorption in larger matters--this unchangeable habit of thought that I
could not shake off even in a drawing-room--puzzled them, because of
their inherent incapacity to understand how it could be. My mind, which
responded so promptly to the need for greater exertions, was reduced to
mere leaden weight by this restless movement of little things. And this
leaden weight, this strained effort to become something other than I was
by nature, was reflected in the smiling faces around me as in a mirror.
The embarrassment in my thoughts extended suddenly to my body, and I
asked myself the next minute if Sally contrasted my heavy silence with
the blithe self-confidence and the sportive pleasantries of Ned
Marshall? Was she beginning already, unconsciously to her own heart,
perhaps, to question if the passion I had given her would suffice to
cover in her life the absence of the unspoken harmony in outward things?
With the question there rose before me the figure of George Bolingbroke,
as he bent over and laid the blossom of sweet alyssum beside her plate;
and, as at the instant in which I had watched him, I felt again the
physical soreness which had become a part of my furious desire to make
good my stand.
When Bonny and Ned Marshall had mounted and ridden happily away in the
dusk, Sally came back with me from the door, and stood, silent and
pensive, for a moment, while she stroked my arm.
"You look tired, Ben. If you only wouldn't work so hard."
"I must work. It's the only thing I'm good for."
"But I see so little of you and--and I get so lonely."
"When I've won out, I'll stop, and then you shall see me every living
minute of the day, if you choose."
"That's so far off, and it's now I want you. I'd like you to take me
away, Ben--to take me somewhere just as you did when we were married."
Her face was very soft in the firelight, and stooping, I kissed her
cheek as she looked up at me, with a grave, almost pensive smile on her
lips.
"I wish I could, sweetheart, but I'm needed here so badly that I don't
dare run off for a day. You've married a working-man, and he's obliged
to stick to his place."
She said nothing more to persuade me, but from that evening until the
spring, when our son was born, it seemed to me that she retreated
farther and farther into that pale dream distance where I had first seen
and desired her. With the coming of the child I got her back to earth
and to reality, and when the warm little body, wrapped in flannels, was
first placed in my arms, it seemed to me that the thrill of the mere
physical contact had in it something of the peculiar starlike radiance
of my bridal night. Sally, lying upon the pillow under a blue satin
coverlet, smiled up at me with flushed cheeks and eyes shining with
love, and while I stood there, some divine significance in her look, in
her helplessness, in the oneness of the three of us drawn together in
that little circle of life, moved my heart to the faint quiver of
apprehension that had come to me while I stood by her side before the
altar in old Saint John's.
When she was well, and the long, still days of the summer opened, little
Benjamin was wrapped in a blue veil and taken in Aunt Euphronasia's arms
to visit Miss Mitty in the old grey house.
"What did she say, mammy? How did she receive him?" asked Sally eagerly,
when the old negress returned.
"She ain' said nuttin' 'tall, honey, cep'n 'huh,'" replied Aunt
Euphronasia, in an aggrieved and resentful tone. "Dar she wuz a-settin'
jes' ez prim by de side er dat ar box er sweet alyssum, en ez soon ez I
lay eyes on her, I said, 'Howdy, Miss Mitty, hyer's Marse Ben's en Miss
Sally's baby done come to see you.' Den she kinder turnt her haid, like
oner dese yer ole wedder cocks on a roof, en she looked me spang in de
eye en said 'huh' out right flat jes' like dat."
"But didn't you show her his pretty blue eyes, mammy?" persisted Sally.
"Go way f'om hyer, chile, Miss Mitty done seen de eyes er a baby befo'
now. I knowed dat, en I lowed in my mind dat you ain' gwinter git aroun'
her by pretendin' you kin show her nuttin'. So I jes' begin ter sidle up
ter her en kinder talk sof ez ef'n I 'uz a-talkin' ter myself. 'Dish yer
chile is jes' de spi't er Marse Bland,' I sez, 'en dar ain' noner de po'
wite trash in de look er him needer.'"
"Aunt Euphronasia, how dare you!" said Sally, sternly.
"Well, 'tis de trufe, ain't hit? Dar ain' nuttin er de po' wite trash in
de look er him, is dar?"
"And what did she say then, Aunt Euphronasia?"
"Who? Miss Mitty? She sez 'huh' again jes' ez she done befo'. Miss Mitty
ain't de kind dat's gwinter eat her words, honey. W'at she sez, she sez,
en she's gwinter stick up ter hit. The hull time I 'uz dar, I ain' never
yearn nuttin' but 'huh!' pass thoo her mouf."
"I knew she was proud, Ben, but I didn't know she was so cruel as to
visit it on this precious angel," said Sally, on the point of tears;
"and I believe Jessy is the same way. Nobody cares about him except his
doting mother."
"What's become of his doting father?"
"Oh, his doting father is entirely too busy with his darling stocks."
"Sally," I asked seriously, "don't you understand that all
this--everything I'm doing--is just for you and the boy?"
"Is it, Ben?" she responded, and the next minute, "Of course, I
understand it. How could I help it?"
She was always reasonable--it was one of her greatest charms, and I knew
that if I were to open my mind to her at the moment, she would enter
into my troubles with all the insight of her resourceful sympathy. But I
kept silence, restrained by some masculine instinct that prompted me to
shut the business world outside the doors of home.
"Well, I must go downtown, dear; I don't see much of you these days, do
I?"
"Not much, but I know you're here to stay and that's a good deal of
comfort."
"I'm glad you've got the baby. He keeps you company."
She looked up at me with the puzzling expression, half humour, half
resentment, I had seen frequently in her face of late. If she stopped to
question whether I really imagined that a child of three months was all
the companionship required by a woman of her years, she let no sign of
it escape the smiling serenity of her lips. On her knees little Benjamin
lay perfectly quiet while he stared straight up at the ceiling with his
round blue eyes like the eyes of an animated doll.
"Yes, he is company," she answered gently; and stooping to kiss them
both, I ran downstairs, hurried into my overcoat, and went out into the
street.
As I closed the door behind me, I saw the General's buggy turning the
corner, and a minute later he drew up under the young maples beside the
pavement, and made room for me under the grey fur rug that covered his
knees.
"I don't like the way things are behaving in Wall Street, Ben," he said.
"Did that last smash cost you anything?"
"About two hundred thousand dollars, General, but I hadn't spoken of
it."
"I hope the bank hasn't been loaning any more money to the Cumberland
and Tidewater. I meant to ask you about that several days ago."
"The question comes up before the directors this afternoon. We'll
probably refuse to advance any further loans, but they've already drawn
on us pretty heavily, you understand, and we may have to go in deeper to
save what we've got."
"Well, it looks pretty shaky, that's all I've got to say. If Jenkins
doesn't butt in and reorganise it, it will probably go into the hands of
a receiver before the year is up. Is it the bank or your private
investments you've been worrying over?"
"My own affairs entirely. You see I'd dealt pretty largely through Cross
and Hankins, and I don't know exactly what their failure will mean to
me."
"A good many men in the country are asking themselves that question. A
smash like that isn't over in a day or a night. But I'm afraid you've
been spending too much money, Ben. Is your wife extravagant?"
"No, it's my own fault. I've never liked her to consider the value of
money."
"It's a bad way to begin. Women have got it in their blood, and I
remember my poor mother used to say she never felt that a dollar was
worth anything until she spent it. If I were you, I'd pull up and go
slowly, but it's mighty hard to do after you've once started at a
gallop."
"I don't think I'll have any trouble, but I hate like the deuce to speak
of it to Sally."
"That's your damned delicacy. It puts me in mind of my cousin, Jenny
Tyler, who married that scamp who used to throw his boots at her. Once
when she was a girl she stayed with us for a summer, and old Judge Lacy,
one of the ugliest men of his day, fell over head and heels in love with
her. She couldn't endure the sight of him, and yet, if you'll believe my
word, though she was as modest as an angel, I actually found him kissing
her one day in a summer-house. 'Bless my soul, Jenny!' I exclaimed, 'why
didn't you tell that old baboon to stop hugging you and behave himself?'
'O Cousin George,' she replied, blushing the colour of a cherry, 'I
didn't like to mention it.' Now, that's the kind of false modesty you've
got, Ben."
"Well, you see, General," I responded when he had finished his sly
chuckle, "I've always felt that money was the only thing that I had to
offer."
"You may feel that way, Ben, but I don't believe that Sally does. My
honest opinion is that it means a lot more to you than it does to her.
There never was a Bland yet that didn't look upon money as a vulgar
thing. I've known Sally's grandfather to refuse to invite a man to his
house when the only objection he had to him was that he was too rich to
be a gentleman. If you think it's wealth or luxury or their old house
that the Blands pride themselves on, you haven't learned a thing about
'em in spite of the fact that you've married into the family. What
they're proud of is that they can do without any of these things;
they've got something else--whatever it is--that they consider a long
sight better. Miss Mitty Bland would still have it if she went in rags
and did her own cooking, and it's this, not any material possessions,
that makes her so terribly important. Look here, now, you take my advice
and go home and tell Sally to stop spending money. How's that boy of
yours? Is he wanting to become a bank president already?"
The old grey horse, rounding the corner at an amble, came suddenly to a
stop as he recognised the half-grown negro urchin waiting upon the
pavement. As if moved by a mechanical spring, the General's expression
changed at once from its sly and jolly good nature to the look of
capable activity which marked the successful man of affairs. The twinkle
in his little bloodshot eyes narrowed to a point of steel, the loose
lines of his mouth, which was the mouth of a generous libertine, grew
instantly sober, and even his crimson neck, sprawling over his puffy,
magenta-coloured tie, stiffened into an appearance of pompous dignity.
"Look sharp about the Cumberland and Tidewater, Ben," he remarked as he
turned to limp painfully into the railroad office. Then the glass doors
swung together behind him, and he forgot my existence, while I crossed
the street in a rush and entered the Union Bank, which was a block
farther down on the opposite side.
On the way home that afternoon, I told myself with determination that I
would tell Sally frankly about the money I had lost; but when a little
later she slipped her hand into my arm, and led me into the nursery to
show me a trunk filled with baby's clothes that had come down from New
York, my courage melted to air, and I could not bring myself to dispel
the pretty excitement with which she laid each separate tiny garment
upon the bed.
"Oh, of course, you don't enjoy them, Ben, as I do, but isn't that
little embroidered cloak too lovely?"
"Lovely, dear, only I've had a bad day, and I'm tired."
"Poor boy, I know you are. Here, we'll put them away. But first there's
something really dreadful I've got to tell you."
"Dreadful, Sally?"
"Yes, but it isn't about us. Do you know, I honestly believe that Jessy
intends to marry Mr. Cottrel."
"What? That old rocking-horse? Why, he's a Methusalah, and knock-kneed
into the bargain."
"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters to her except clothes. I've heard of
women who sold themselves for clothes, and I believe she's one of them."
"Well, we're an eccentric family," I said wearily, "and she's the
worst."
At any other time the news would probably have excited my indignation,
but as I sat there, in the wicker rocking-chair, by the nursery fire, I
was too exhausted to resent any manifestation of the family spirit. The
last week had been a terrible strain, and there were months ahead which
I knew would demand the exercise of every particle of energy that I
possessed. In the afternoon there was to be a meeting of the directors
of the bank, called to discuss the advancing of further loans to the
Cumberland and Tidewater Railroad, and at eight o'clock I had promised
to work for several hours with Bradley, my secretary. To go slowly now
was impossible. My only hope was that by going fast enough I might
manage to save what remained of the situation.
As the winter passed I went earlier to my office and came up later.
Failure succeeded failure in Wall Street, and the whole country began
presently to send back echoes of the prolonged crash. The Cumberland and
Tidewater Railroad, to which we had refused a further loan, went into
the hands of a receiver, and the Great South Midland and Atlantic
immediately bought up the remnants at its own price. The General, who
had been jubilant about the purchase, relapsed into melancholy a week
later over the loss of "a good third" of his personal income.
"I'm an old fool or I'd have stopped dabbling in speculations and put
away a nest-egg for my old age," he remarked, wiping his empurpled lids
on his silk handkerchief. "No man over fifty ought to be trusted to
gamble in stocks. Thank God, I'm the one to suffer, however, and not the
road. If there's a more solid road in the country, Ben, than the South
Midland, I've got to hear of it. It's big, but it's growing--swallowing
up everything that comes in its way, like a regular boa constrictor.
Think what it was when I came into it immediately after the war; and
to-day it's one of the few roads that is steadily increasing its
earnings in spite of this blamed panic."
"You worked regeneration, General, as I've often told you."
"Well, I'm too old to see what it's coming to. I hope a good man will
step into my place after I'm gone. I'm sometimes sorry you didn't stick
by me, Ben."
He spoke of the great road in a tone of regretful sentiment which I had
never found in his allusions to his lost Matoaca. The romance of his
life, after all, was not a woman, but a railroad, and his happiest
memory was, I believe, not the Sunday upon which he had stood beside the
rose-lined bonnet of his betrothed and sung lustily out of the same
hymn-book, but the day when the stock of the Great South Midland and
Atlantic had sold at 180 in the open market.
"I'll tell you what, my boy," he remarked with a quiver of his lower
lip, which hung still farther away from his bloodless gum, "a woman may
go back on you, and the better the woman the more likely she is to do
it,--but a road won't,--no, not if it is a good road."
"Well, I'm not getting much return out of the West Virginia and Wyanoke
just now," I replied. "It's no fun being a little road at the mercy of a
big one when the big one is a boa constrictor. Even if you get a fair
division of the rates, you don't get your cars when you want them."
"The moral of that," returned the General, with a chuckle, "is, to quote
from my poor old mammy again, 'Don't hatch until you're ready to hatch
whole.'"
We parted with a laugh, and I dismissed the affairs of the little
railroad as I entered my office at the bank, where my private wire
immediately ticked off the news of a state of panic in the money market.
That was in February, and it was not until the end of March that the ice
on which I was walking cracked under my feet and I went through.
CHAPTER XXIV
IN WHICH I GO DOWN
I had just risen from breakfast on the last day of March when I was
called to the telephone by Cummins, the cashier of the bank.
"Things are going pretty queer down here. Looks as if a run were
beginning. Some old fool started it after reading about that failure of
the Darlington Trust Company in New York. Wish you'd hurry."
"Call up the directors, and look here!--pay out all deposits slowly
until I get there."
The telephone rang off, and picking up my hat, I went down the front
steps to the carriage, which had been ordered by Sally for an early
appointment. As I stepped in, she appeared in her hat and coat and
joined me.
"Drive to the bank, Micah," I said, "I want to get there like
lightning."
"Can you wait till I speak to mammy? She is bringing the baby."
For the first time since our marriage my nerves got the better of me,
and I answered her sharply.
"No, I can't wait--not a minute, not a second. Drive on, Micah."
In obedience to my commands, Micah touched the horses, and as we sped
down Franklin Street, Sally looked at me with an expression which
reminded me of the faint wonder under the fixed smile about Miss Mitty's
mouth.
"What's the matter, Ben? Are you working too hard?" she enquired.
"I'm tired and I'm anxious. Do you realise that we are living in the
midst of a panic?"
"Are we?" she asked quietly, and arranged the fur rug over her knees.
"Do you mean to tell me you hadn't heard it?" I demanded, in pure
amazement that the thing which had possessed me to madness for three
months should have escaped the consciousness of the wife with whom I
lived.
"How was I to hear of it? You never told me, and I seldom read the
papers now since the baby came. Of course I knew something was wrong.
You were looking so badly and so much older."
To me it had needed no telling, because it had become suddenly the most
obvious fact in the world in which I moved. Only a fool would gaze up at
the sky during a storm burst and remark to a bystander, "It thunders."
Yet even now I saw that what she realised was not the gravity of the
financial crisis, but its injurious effect upon my health and my
appearance.
"You've been on too great a strain," she remarked sympathetically; "when
it's all over you must come away and we'll go to Florida in the
General's car."
To Florida! and at that instant I was struggling in the grip of
failure--the failure of the successful financier, which is of all
failures the hardest. Not a few retrenchments, not the economy of a
luxury here and there, but ultimate poverty was the thing that I faced
while I sat beside her on the soft cushions under the rich fur rug. One
by one the familiar houses whirled by me. I saw the doors open and shut,
the people come out of them, the sunshine fall through the budding trees
on the sidewalk; and the houses and the moving people and the budding
trees, all seemed to me detached and unreal, as if they stood apart
somewhere in a world of quiet, while I was sucked in by the whirlpool.
Though I lifted my voice and called aloud to them, I felt that the
people I passed would still go quietly in and out of the opening doors
in the placid spring sunshine.
"There's Bonny Page," said Sally, waving her hand; "she's to marry Ned
Marshall next month, you know, and they are going to Europe. Did you
notice that baby in the carriage--the one with blue bows and the Irish
lace afghan?--it is Bessy Munford's,--the handsomest in town, they say,
after little Benjamin."
The sight of the baby carriage, with its useless blue fripperies,
trundled on the pavement under the budding trees, had aroused in me a
sudden ridiculous anger, as though it represented the sinful
extravagance of an entire nation. That silly carriage with its blue
ribbons and its lace coverlet! And over the whole country factory after
factory was shutting down, and thousands of hungry mothers and children
were sitting on door-steps in this same sunshine. My nerves were bad. It
had been months since I had a good night's sleep, and I knew that in the
condition of my temper a trifle might be magnified out of all due
proportion to its relative significance.
The horses stopped at the bank, and Sally leaned out to bow smilingly to
one of the directors, who was coming along the sidewalk.
"I never saw so many people about here, Ben," she remarked; "it looks
exactly as if it were a theatre. Ah, there's the General now going into
his office. He hobbles so badly, doesn't he? When do you think you'll be
home?"
"I don't know," I returned shortly, "perhaps at midnight--perhaps next
week."
My tone brought a flush to her cheek, and she looked at me with the
faint wonder that I had seen first on the face of Miss Mitty when I went
in to breakfast with her on that autumn morning. It was the look of
race, of the Bland breeding, of the tradition that questioned, not
violently, but gently, "Can this be possible?"
She drove on without replying to me, and as I entered my office, the
faces of Miss Mitty and of Sally were confused into one by my disordered
mind.
The run had already started--a depositor, who had withdrawn ten thousand
dollars after reading of the failure of the Darlington Trust Company,
had been paid off first, and following him the line had come, crawling
like black ants on the pavement. As I entered the doors, it seemed to me
that the face of each man or woman in the throng stood out, separate and
distinct, as though an electric search-light had passed over it; and I
saw one and all, frightened, satisfied, or merely ludicrous, with a
vividness of perception which failed me when I remembered the features
of my own wife.
"We can pay them off slowly till three o'clock," said Bingley, the
vice-president, whom I found, with five or six of the directors, already
in my office. "I've got only one paying teller's window open. The
trouble, of course, began with the small accounts, of which we carry
such a blamed lot. Mark my words, it is the little depositor that
endangers a bank."
He looked nervous, and swallowed hastily while he talked, as if he had
just rushed in from breakfast, with his last mouthful still unchewed. As
I entered and faced the men sitting in different attitudes, but all
wearing the same strained and helpless expression, a feeling of
irritation swept over me, and I paused in the middle of the floor, with
my hat and a folded newspaper in my hand.
"A quarter of a million in hard cash would tide us over, I believe,"
pursued Bingley, swallowing faster; "but the question is how in thunder
are we to lay hands on it by nine o'clock to-morrow morning?"
I drew out my watch, and with the simple, mechanical action, I was
conscious of an immediate quickening of the blood, a clearing of the
brain. A certain readiness for decision, a power of dealing with an
emergency, of handling a crisis, a response of pulse and brain to the
call for action, stood me service now as in every difficult instant of
my career. They were picked business men and shrewd financiers before
me, yet I was aware that I dominated them, all and each, by some quality
of force, of aggressiveness, of inflated self-confidence. The secret of
my success, I had once said to the General, was that I began to get cool
when I saw other people getting scared.
"It is now a quarter of ten, gentlemen," I said, "and I pledge my word
of honour that I will have a quarter of a million dollars in bank by ten
o'clock to-morrow."
"For God's sake, Ben, where is it coming from?" demanded Judge Kenton,
an old Confederate, with the solemn face I had sometimes watched him
assume in church during the singing of the hymns. As I looked at him the
humour of his expression struck me, and I broke into a laugh.
"I beg your pardon," I returned the next minute, "but I'll get
it--somewhere--if it's in the city."
One of the men--I forget which, though I remember quite clearly that he
wore a red necktie--got up from the table and slapped me on the
shoulder.
"Go ahead, Ben, and get it," he said. "We take your word."
On the pavement the crowd had thickened, and when it caught sight of me,
a confused murmur rose, and I was surrounded by half-hysterical women.
The trouble, as Bingley had said, had begun with the small depositors;
and in the line that pressed now like black ants to the doors, there
were many evidently who had entrusted their nest-eggs to us for
safe-keeping. I was not gentle by nature, and the sight of a woman's
tears always aroused in me, not the angel, but the brute. For five years
I had been married to a descendant of the Blands and the Fairfaxes, and
yet, as I stood there, held at bay, in the midst of those sobbing women,
the veneer of refinement peeled off from me, and the raw strength of the
common man showed on the surface, and triumphed again as it had
triumphed over the frightened directors in my office.
"What are you whining about?" I said with a laugh, "your money is all
there. Go in and get it."
An old woman in a plaid shawl, with her mouth twisted sideways by a
recent stroke of paralysis, barred my way with an outstretched hand, in
which she held the foot of a grey yarn stocking.
"I'd laid it up for my old age, Mister," she mumbled, through her
toothless gums, "an' they told me it was safer in the bank, so I put it
there. But I reckon I'd feel easier if I had it back--I reckon I'd feel
easier."
"Then go after it," I replied harshly, pushing her out of my way. "If
you don't get it before I come back, I'll give it to you with my own
hands."
For a minute my presence subdued the crowd; but the panic terror had
gripped it, and while I crossed the street the hysterical murmurs were
in my ears. A desire to turn and throttle the sound as I might a howling
wild beast took possession of me. It was true, I suppose, as Dr.
Theophilus had once told me, that the quality I lacked was tenderness.
The General fortunately was alone in his private office, and when I went
in he glanced up enquiringly from a railroad report he was reading.
"It's you, Ben, is it?" he remarked, and went back to his paper.
"General," I said bluntly, and stopped short in the centre of the room,
"I want a quarter of a million dollars in cash by nine o'clock to-morrow
morning."
For a moment he sat speechless, blinking at me with his swollen eyelids,
while his lower lip protruded angrily, like the lip of a crying child.
Then the old war-horse in him responded gallantly to the scent of
battle.
"Damn you, Ben, do you know cash is as tight as wax?" he enquired. "You
ain't dozing in the midst of a panic?"
"There's trouble at the bank," I replied. "A run has started, but so far
it is almost entirely among the small depositors. We can manage to pay
off till three o'clock, and if we open to-morrow with a quarter of a
million, we shall probably keep on our feet, unless the excitement
spreads."
"When do you want it?"
"By nine o'clock to-morrow morning; and I want it, General," I added,
"on my personal credit."
He rose from his chair and stood swaying unsteadily on his gouty foot.
"I'll give you every penny that I've got, Ben," he answered, "but it
ain't that much."
"You have access to the cash of both the Tilden Bank and the Bonfield
Trust Company. If there's a dollar in the city you can get it."
A hint of his sly humour appeared for an instant in his eyes. "It wasn't
any longer ago than breakfast that I remarked I didn't believe there was
a blamed dollar in the whole country," he returned. Then his swaying
stopped and he became invested suddenly with the dignity of the greatest
financier in the state.
"Hand me my stick, Ben, and I'll go and see what I can do about it," he
said.
I gave him his stick and my arm, and with my assistance he limped to the
offices of the Bonfield Trust Company on the next block. When I returned
to the bank the directors were talking excitedly, but at my entrance a
hush fell, and they sat looking at me with a row of vacant, expectant
faces that waited apparently to be filled with expression.
"By ten o'clock to-morrow morning," I said, "a quarter of a million in
cash will be brought in through the door in bags."
"I told you he'd do it," exclaimed Bingley, as he grasped my hand, "and
I hope to God it will stay 'em off."
"You need a drink, Ben," observed Judge Kenton, "and so do I. Let's go
and get it. A soft-boiled egg was all I had for breakfast, and I've gone
faint."
I remember that I went to a restaurant with him, that a few old women
sitting on the curbing spoke to us as we passed, that we ate oysters,
and returned in half an hour to another meeting, that we discussed ways
and means until eight o'clock and decided nothing. I know also that when
we came out again several of the old women were still crouching there,
and that when they came whining up to me, I turned on them with an oath
and ordered them to be off. As clearly as if it were yesterday, I can
see still the long, solemn face of the Judge as he glanced up at me, and
I see written upon it something of the faint wonder that I had grown to
regard as the peculiar look of the Blands.
I had telephoned Sally not to wait, and when I reached home I found that
she had dismissed the servants and was preparing a little supper for me
herself. While she served me, I sat perfectly silent, too exhausted to
talk or to think, trying in vain to remember the more important events
of the day. Only once did Sally speak, and that was to beg me to eat the
slice of cold turkey she had laid on my plate.
"I'm not hungry, I got something with Judge Kenton down town," I
returned as I pushed back my chair and rose from the table; "what I need
is sleep, sleep, sleep. If I don't get to bed, I'll drop to sleep on the
hearth-rug."
"Then go, dear," she answered, and not until I reached the landing above
did I realise that through it all she had not put a single question to
me. With the realisation I knew that I ought to have told her what in
her heart she must have felt it to be her right to know; but a nervous
shrinking, which seemed to be a result of my complete physical
exhaustion, held me back when I started to retrace my steps.
She might cry, and the sight of tears would unman me. There's time
enough, I thought. Why not to-morrow instead? Yet in my heart I knew it
would be no easier to do it to-morrow than it was to-day. By some
strange freak of the imagination those unshed tears of hers seemed
already dropping upon my nerves. "There's time enough, she'll be obliged
to hear it in the end," something within me repeated with a kind of
dulness. And with the words, while my head touched the pillow, I started
suddenly wide awake as though from the flash of a lantern that was
turned inward. Trivial impressions of the afternoon stood out as if
illuminated against the outer darkness, and there hovered before me the
face of the old woman, in the plaid shawl, with her twisted mouth, and
the foot of her grey yarn stocking held out in her palsied hand. "I
reckon I'd feel easier if I had it back," said a voice somewhere in my
brain.
CHAPTER XXV
WE FACE THE FACTS AND EACH OTHER
The panic which had begun with the depositors of small accounts, spread
next day to the holders of larger ones, and even while I stood at my
window and watched the cash brought in in bags through the cheering
crowd on the sidewalk, I knew that the quarter of a million dollars
would go down with the rest. My financial insight had misled me, and the
bank funds, which I had believed so carefully guarded, had suffered the
same fate as my private fortune. There were more serious questions
behind the immediate need of currency, and these questions drummed in my
mind now, dull and regular as the beat of a hammer.
For three days we paid off our accounts, and at the end of that time,
when I left the building, after the run had stopped, it seemed to me
that the city had a deserted and trampled look, as if some enormous
picnic had been held in the streets. A few loose shreds of paper, a
banana peel here and there, the ends of numerous cigars, and the white
patch torn from a woman's petticoat littered the pavement. Over all
there was a thick coating of dust, and the wind, blowing straight from
the east, whipped swirls of it into our faces, as the General and I
drove slowly up-town in his buggy.
"You look down in the mouth, Ben," he remarked, as I took the reins.
"I've got an infernal toothache, General; it kept me awake all night."
"Well, bless my soul, you ought to be thankful if it takes your mind off
the country. I haven't seen such a state of affairs since the days of
reconstruction. I tell you, my boy, the only thing on earth to do is to
take a julep. Lithia water is well enough in times of prosperity, but
you can't support a panic on it. I've gone back to my julep, and if I
die of it, I'll die with a little spirit in me."
"There're worse things than death ahead of me, General, there's ruin."
"It's the toothache, Ben. Don't let it take all the spirit out of you."
"No, it's more than the toothache, confound it!--it never leaves off.
The truth is, I'm in the tightest place of my life, and to keep what I
own would cost me more than I've got. I haven't the money to pay up--and
if I can't buy outright, you see that I must let go."
"I've done what I could for you, Ben, and if there is more I can do,
heaven knows I'll be thankful enough."
"You've already done too much, General, but I've made sure that you
shan't suffer by it. I've simply gone down, that's all, and I've got to
stay there till I can get on my feet. The bank will close temporarily, I
suppose, but when it starts again, it will have to start with another
man. I shall look out for a smaller job."
"If you come back to the road, I'll find a place for you--but it won't
be like being a bank president, you know."
"Well, when the time comes, I'll let you know," I added, when the buggy
stopped before my door, and I handed him the reins.
"Listen to me, my boy," he called back, as he drove off and I went up
the brown stone steps, "and take a julep."
But the support I needed was not that of whiskey, and though I swallowed
a dozen juleps, the thought of Sally's face when I broke the news would
suffer no blessed obscurity.
"Shall I tell her now, or after dinner?" I asked, while I drew out my
latch-key; and then when she met me at the head of the staircase, with
her shining eyes, I grew cowardly again, and said, "Not now--not now.
To-night I will tell her."
At night, when we sat opposite to each other, with a silver bowl of
jonquils between us, she began talking idly about the marriage of Bonny
Page, inspired, I felt, by a valiant determination to save the situation
in the eyes of the servants at least. The small yellow candle shades,
made to resemble flowers, shone like suns in a mist before my eyes; and
all the time that my thoughts worked over the approaching hour, I heard,
like a muffled undertone, the soft, regular footfalls of old Esdras, the
butler, on the velvet carpet.
"I'll tell her after the servants have gone, and the house is
quiet--when she has taken off her dinner gown--when she may turn on her
pillow and cry it out. I'll say simply, 'Sally, I am ruined. I haven't a
penny left of my own. Even the horses and the carriages and the
furniture are not mine!' No, that is a brutal way. It will be better to
put it like this"--"What did you say, dear?" I asked, speaking aloud.
"Only that Bonny Page is to have six bridesmaids, but the wedding will
be quiet, because they have lost money."
"They've lost money?"
"Everybody has lost money--everybody, the General says. Ben, do you
know," she added, "I've never cared truly about money in my heart."
In some vague woman's way she meant it, I suppose, yet as I looked at
her, where she sat beyond the bowl of jonquils, in one of her old Paris
gowns, which she had told me she was wearing out, I broke into a short,
mirthless laugh. She held her head high, with its wreath of plaits that
made a charming frame for her arched black eyebrows and her full red
mouth. On her bare throat, round and white as a marble column, there was
an old-fashioned necklace of wrought gold, which had belonged to some
ancestress, who was doubtless the belle and beauty of her generation.
Was it possible to picture her in a common gown, with her sleeves rolled
up and the perplexed and anxious look that poverty brings in her eyes?
For the first time in my life I was afraid to face the moment before me.
The roast was removed, the dessert served, and played with in silence.
The footfalls of old Esdras, the butler, sounded softer on the carpet,
as he carried away the untasted pudding and brought coffee and an
apricot brandy, which he placed before me with a persuasive air. I lit a
cigar at the flame of the little silver lamp he offered me, drank my
coffee hurriedly, and rose from the table.
"Are you going to work, Ben?" asked Sally, following me to the door of
the library.
"Yes, I am going to work."
Without a word she raised her lips to mine, and when I had kissed her,
she turned slowly away, and went up the staircase, with the branching
lights in the hall shining upon her head.
I closed the door, lowered the wick of the oil lamp on my desk, and
began walking up and down the length of the room, between the black oak
bookcases filled with rows of calf-bound volumes. I tried to think, but
between my thoughts and myself there obtruded always, like some small,
malignant devil, the face of the old woman on the pavement before the
bank, with her distorted and twisted mouth. "This will have to
go--everything will have to go--when I've sold every last stick I have
in the world, I shall still owe a debt of some cool hundreds of
thousands. I'll pay that, too, some day. Of course, of course, but when?
Meanwhile, we've got to live somewhere, somehow. There's the child,
too--and there's Sally. I always said I'd only money to give her, and
now I haven't that. We'll have to go into some cheap place, and I'll
begin over again, with the disadvantages of a failure behind me, and a
burden of debt on my shoulders. She's got to know--I've got to tell her.
Confound that old woman! Why can't I keep her out of my thoughts?"
The hours went by, and still I walked up and down between the black oak
bookcases, driven by some demon of torture to follow the same line in
the Turkish rug, to turn always at the same point, to measure always the
same number of steps.
"Well, she got her money--they all got their money," I said at last. "I
am the only one who is ruined--no, not the only one--there is Sally and
there is the child. I'd feel easier," I added, echoing the words of the
old woman aloud, "I'd feel easier if I were the only one."
A clock somewhere in the city struck the hour of midnight, and while the
sound was still in the air, the door opened softly and Sally came into
the room. She had slipped on a wrapper over her nightdress, and her
hair, flattened and warmed by the pillow, hung in a single braid over
her bosom. There were deep circles under her eyes, which shone the more
brilliantly because of the heavy shadows.
"What is the matter, Ben? Why don't you come upstairs?"
"I couldn't sleep--I am thinking," I answered, almost roughly, oppressed
by my weight of misery.
"Would you rather be alone? Shall I go away again?"
"Yes, I'd rather be alone."
She went silently to the door, stood there a minute, and then ran back
with her arms outstretched.
"Oh, Ben, Ben, why are you so hard? Why are you so cruel?"
"Cruel? Hard? To you, Sally?"
"You treat me as if--as if I'd married you for your money and you've
made me hate and despise it. I wish--I almost wish we hadn't a penny."
I laughed the bitter, mirthless laugh that had broken from me at dinner.
"As a matter of fact we haven't--not a single penny that we can honestly
call our own."
She drew back instantly, her head held high under the branching electric
jet in the ceiling.
"Well, I'm glad of it," she responded defiantly.
"You don't in the least understand what it means, Sally. It isn't merely
giving up a few luxuries, it is actually going without the necessities.
It is practically beginning again."
"I am glad of it," she repeated, and there was no regret in her voice.
"Oh, can't you understand?"
"Tell me and I will try."
"I've lost everything. I'm ruined."
"There is nothing left?"
"There is honour," I said bitterly, "a couple of hundred thousand
dollars of debt, and a little West Virginia railroad too poor to go
bankrupt."
"Then we must start from the very bottom?"
"From the very bottom. Nothing that you are likely to imagine can be
worse than the facts--and I've brought you to it."
Something that was like a sob burst from me, and turning away, I flung
myself into the chair on the hearth-rug.
"Can't you think of anything that would be worse?" she asked quietly.
I shook my head, "The worst thing about it is that I've brought you to
it."
"Wouldn't it be worse," she went on in the same level voice, "if you had
lost me?"
"Lost you!" I cried, and my arms were open at the thought.
"I'm glad, I'm glad." With the words she was on her knees at my side,
and her mouth touched my cheek. "I knew it wasn't the worst, Ben,--I
knew you'd rather give up the money than give up me. Ah, can't you
see--can't you see, that the worst can't come to us while we are still
together?"
Leaning over her, I gathered her to me with a hunger for comfort,
kissing her eyes, her mouth, her throat, and the loosened braid on her
bosom.
"Oh, you witch, you've almost made me happy!" I said.
"I am happy, Ben."
"Happy? The horses must go, and the carriage and the furniture even.
We'll have to move into some cheap place. I'll get a position of some
kind with the railroad, and then we'll have to scrimp and save for an
eternity, until we pay off this damned burden of debt."
She laughed softly, her mouth at my ear. "I'm happy, Ben."
"We shan't be able to keep servants. You'll have to wear old clothes,
and I'll go so shabby that you'll be ashamed of me. We'll forget what a
bottle of wine looks like, and if we were ever to see a decent dinner,
we shouldn't recognise it."
Again she laughed, "I'm still happy, Ben."
"We'll live in some God-forsaken, out-of-the-way little hole, and never
even dare ask a person in to a meal for fear there wouldn't be enough
potatoes to go around. It will be a daily uphill grind until I've
managed to pay off honestly every cent I owe."
Her arms tightened about my neck, "Oh, Ben, I'm so happy."
"Then you are a perfectly abandoned creature," I returned, lifting her
from the rug until she nestled against my heart. "I've given up trying
to make you as miserable as a self-respecting female ought to be. If you
won't be proper and wretched, I can't help it, for I've done my best.
And the most ridiculous part of it is, darling, that I actually believe
I'm happy, too!"
She laughed like a child between her kisses. "Then, you see, it isn't
really the thing, but the way you take it that matters."
"I'm not sure about the logic of that--but I'm inclined to think just
now that the only thing I've ever taken is you."
"If you'll try to remember that, you'll be always happy."
"But I must remember also that I've brought you to poverty--I, who had
only money to give you."
"Do you dare to tell me to my face that I married you for money?"
"You couldn't very well have married me without it."
"I don't know about the 'very well,' but I know that I'd have done it."
"Do you think that, Sally?"
Turning in my arms, she lifted her head, and looked steadily into my
face.
"Have I ever lied to you since we were married, Ben?"
"No, darling."
"Have I ever deceived you?"
"Never, I am sure," I responded with a desperate levity, "except for my
good."
"Have I ever deceived you," she demanded sternly, "even for your good?"
"To tell the truth, I don't believe you ever have."
The warm pressure of her body was withdrawn, and rising to her feet, she
stood before me under the blazing light.
"Then I'm not lying to you when I say that I'd have married you if you
hadn't possessed a penny to your name--I'd have married you if--if I'd
had to take in washing."
"Sally!" I cried, and made a movement to recapture her; but pushing me
back, she stood straight and tall, with the fingers of her outstretched
hand touching my breast.
"No, listen to me, listen to me," she said gravely. "As long as I have
you and you love me, Ben, nothing can break my spirit, because the thing
that makes life of value to me will still be mine. If you ever ceased to
love me, I might get desperate, and do something wild and foolish--even
run off with another man, I believe--I don't know, but I am my father's
daughter, as well as my mother's. Until that time comes, I can bear
anything, and bear it with courage--with gaiety even. I can imagine
myself without everything else, but not without you. I love my
child--you know I love my child--but even my child isn't you. If I had
to choose to-night between my baby and you, I'd give him up,--and cling
the closer to you. You are myself, and if I had to choose between
everything else I've ever known in my life and you, I'd let everything
else go and follow you anywhere--anywhere. There is nothing that you can
endure that I cannot share with you. I can bear poverty, I could even
have borne shame. If we had to go to some strange country far away from
all I have ever known, I could go and go cheerfully. I can work beside
you, I can work for you--oh, my dear, my dearest, I am your wife, do you
still doubt me?"
I had fallen on my knees before her, with her open palms pressed to my
forehead, in which my very brain seemed throbbing. As I looked up at
her, she stooped and gathered me to her bosom.
"Do you know me now?" she asked in a whisper.
Then her voice broke, and the next instant she would have sunk down
beside me, if I had not sprung to my feet and lifted her in my arms.
While I held her thus, pressed close against me, something of her
radiant strength entered into me, and I was aware of a power in myself
that was neither hers nor mine, but the welding of the finer qualities
in both our natures.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE RED FLAG AT THE GATE
Sally was not beside me when I awoke in the morning, nor was she sipping
her coffee by the window, as I had sometimes found her doing when I
slept late. Going downstairs an hour afterwards, I discovered her, for
the first time since our marriage, awaiting me in the dining-room. In
her dainty breakfast jacket of blue silk, with a bit of lace and ribbon
framing her wreath of plaits, she appeared to my tired eyes as the
embodied freshness and buoyancy of the morning. Would her sparkling
gaiety endure, I wondered, through the monotonous days ahead, when
poverty became, not a child's play, not a game tricked out by the
imagination, but the sordid actuality of hard work and hourly
self-denial?
"I am practising early rising, Ben," she said, "and it's astonishing
what an appetite it gives one. I've made the coffee myself, and Aunt
Mehitable has just taught me how to make yeast. One can never tell what
may come useful, you know, and if we go to live somewhere in a jungle,
which I'm quite prepared to do, you'd be glad to know that I could make
yeast, wouldn't you?"
"I suppose so, sweetheart, and as a matter of fact," I added presently,
"this is the best cup of coffee I've had for many a month."
Laughing merrily, she perched herself on the arm of my chair, and sipped
out of the cup I held toward her. "Of course it is. So you've gained
that much by losing everything. It's very strange, Ben, and you may
consider it presumptuous, but I've a profound conviction somewhere in
the bottom of my heart that I can do everything better than anybody
else, if I once turn my hand to it. At this minute I haven't a doubt
that my yeast is better than Aunt Mehitable's. I'm going to cook dinner,
too, and she'll be positively jealous of my performance. How do we know
whether or not we'll meet any cooks in the jungle? And if we do, they'll
probably be tigers--"
"Oh, Sally, Sally! You think it play now, but what will you feel when
you know it's earnest?"
"Of course it's earnest. Do you imagine I'd get out of my bed at seven
o'clock and cut up a slimy potato if it wasn't earnest? That may be your
idea of play, but it's not mine."
"And you expect to flutter about a stove in a pale blue breakfast jacket
and a lace cap?"
"Just as long as they last. When they go, I suppose I'll have to take to
calico, but it will be pretty calico, and pink. Pink calico don't cost a
penny more than drab--and there's one thing I positively decline to do,
even in a jungle, and that is look ugly."
"You couldn't if you tried, my beauty."
"Oh, yes, I could--I could look hideous--any woman could if she tried.
But as long as it doesn't cost any more, you've no objection to my
cooking in pink instead of drab, I suppose?"
"I've an objection to your cooking in anything. Another cup of coffee,
please."
"Ben."
"Yes, dear."
"You never drank but one of Aunt Mehitable's."
"I'm aware of it, and I'm aware of something else. It's worth being
poor, Sally, to be poor with you."
"Then give me another taste of your coffee. But you don't call this
being poor, do you, you silly boy?--with all this beautiful mahogany
that I can use for a mirror? This isn't any fun in the world. Just wait
until I spread the cloth over a pine table. Then we'll have something to
laugh at sure enough, Ben."
"And I thought you'd cry!"
"You thought a great many very foolish things, my dear. You even thought
I'd married you because I wanted to be rich, and it seemed an easy way."
"Only it turned out to be an easier way of getting poor."
"Well, rich or poor, what I married you for, after all, was the
essential thing."
"And you've got it, sweetheart?"
"Of course I've got it. If I didn't have it, do you think I'd be able to
laugh at a pine table?"
"If I were only sure you realised it!"
"You'll be sure enough when we are in the midst of it, and we'll be in
the midst of it, I don't doubt, in a little while. I've been thinking
pretty hard since last night, and this is what I worked out while I was
making yeast."
"Let's have it, then."
"Now, the first thing we've got to do is to get out of debt, isn't it?"
"The very first thing, if it can be managed."
"We'll manage it this way. The furniture and the silver and my jewels
must all be sold, of course; that's easy. But even after we've done
that, there'll still be a great big burden to carry, I suppose?"
"Pretty big, I'm afraid, for your shoulders."
"Oh, we'll pay it every bit in the end. We won't go bankrupt. You'll go
back to the railroad on a salary, and we'll begin to pinch on the spot."
"Yes, but times are hard and salaries are low."
"Anyway they're salaries, there's that much to be said for them. And
while we're pinching as hard as we can pinch, we'll move over to Church
Hill and rent two or three rooms in the old house with the enchanted
garden. All the servants will have to go except Aunt Euphronasia, who
couldn't go very far, poor thing, because she's rheumatic and can't
stand on her feet. She can sit still very well, however, and rock the
baby, and I'll look after the rooms and get the meals--I'm glad they'll
be simple ones--and we'll put by every penny that we can save."
"The mere interest on the debt will take almost as much as we can save.
There'll be some arrangement made, of course, and the payments will be
easy, but there's one thing I'm determined on, and that is that I'll pay
it, every cent, if I live. Then, too, there's chance, you know.
Something may turn up--something almost always turns up to a man like
myself."
"Well, if it turns up, we'll welcome it with open arms. But in the
meantime we'll see if we can't scrape along without it. I'm going over
this morning to look for rooms. How soon, Ben, do you suppose they will
evict us?"
"Does there exist a woman," I demanded sternly, "who can be humorous
over her own eviction?"
"It's better to be humorous over one's own than over one's neighbour's,
isn't it? And besides, a laugh may help things, but tears never do. I
was born laughing, mamma always said."
"Then laugh on, sweetheart."
I had risen from the table, and was moving toward the door, when she
caught my arm.
"There's only one thing I'll never, never consent to," she said, "you
remember Dolly?"
"Your old mare?"
"I've pensioned her, you know, and I'll pay that pension as long as she
lives if we both have to starve."
"You shall do it if we're hanged and drawn for it--and now, Sally, I
must be off to my troubles!"
"Then, good-by and be brave. Oh, Ben, my dearest, what is the matter?"
"It's my head. I've been worrying too much, and it's gone back on me
like that twice in the last few days."
I went out hurriedly, convinced that even failure wasn't quite so bad as
it had appeared from a distance; and Sally, following me to the door,
stood smiling after me as I went down the block toward the car line.
Looking back at the corner, I saw that she was still standing on the
threshold, with the sun in her eyes and her head held high under the
ruffle of lace and ribbon that framed her hair.
The street was filled with people that morning, and at the end of the
first block Bonny Page nodded to me jauntily, as she passed on her early
ride with Ned Marshall. Turning, almost unconsciously, my eyes followed
her graceful, very erect figure, in its close black habit, swaying so
perfectly with the motion of her chestnut mare. An immeasurable,
wind-blown space seemed to stretch between us, and the very sound of the
horse's hoofs on the cobblestones in the street came to me, faint and
thin, as if it had floated back from some remote past which I but dimly
remembered. I had never felt, even when standing at Bonny's side, that I
was within speaking distance of her, and to-day, while I looked after
the vanishing horses, I knew that odd, baffling sensation of struggling
to break through an inflexible, yet invisible barrier. Why was it that I
who had won Sally should still remain so hopelessly divided from all
that to which Sally by right and by nature belonged?
Farther down the two great sycamores, still gaunt and bare as skeletons,
stood out against a sky of intense blueness; and on the crooked pavement
beneath, the shadows, fine and delicate as lace-work, rippled gently in
the wind that blew straight in from the river. Looking up from under the
silvery boughs, I saw the wire cage of the canary between the parted
curtains, and beyond it the pale oval face of Miss Mitty, with its
grave, set smile, so like the smile of the painted Blands and Fairfaxes
that hung, in massive frames, on the drawing-room walls. In the midst of
my own ruin an impulse of compassion entered my heart. The vacancy of
the old grey house was like the vacancy of a tomb in which the ashes
have scattered, and the one living spirit seemed that of the canary
singing joyously in his wire cage. Something in the song brought Sally
to my mind as she had appeared that morning at breakfast, and I felt
again the soft, comforting touch of the hand she had laid on my face.
Then I turned my eyes to the street, and saw George Bolingbroke coming
slowly toward me, beyond the last great sycamore, which grew midway of
the bricks. At the sight of him all that had comforted or supported me
crumbled and fell. In its place came that sharp physical soreness--like
the soreness from violent action--that the shock of my failure had
brought. I, who had meant so passionately to win in the race, was
suddenly crippled. Money, I had said, was all that I had to give, and
yet I was beggared now even of that. Shorn of my power, what remained to
me that would make me his match?
He came up, taking his cigar from his mouth as he stopped, and flicking
the ashes away, while he stood looking at me with an expression of
sympathy which he struggled in vain, I saw, to dissemble. On his finely
coloured, though rather impassive features, there was the same darkening
of a carefully suppressed emotion--the same lines of anger drawn, not by
temper, but by suffering--that I had seen first at the club when his
favourite hunter had died, and next on the day when the General had
spoken to him, in my presence, of my engagement to Sally. Under his
short dark mustache, his thin, nervous lips were set closely together.
"I'm awfully cut up, Ben," he said, "I declare I don't know when I was
ever so cut up about anything before."
"I'm cut up too, George, like the deuce, but it doesn't appear to help
matters, somehow."
"That's the worst thing about being a man of affairs like you--or like
Uncle George," he observed, making an amiable effort to assure me that
even in the hour of adversity, I still held my coveted place in the
General's class; "when the crash comes, you big ones have to pay the
piper, while the rest of us small fry manage to go scot-free."
It was put laboriously, but beneath the words I felt the force of that
painful sympathy, too strong for concealment, and yet not strong enough
to break through the inherited habit of self-command. The General had
broken through, I acknowledged, but then was not the very greatness of
the great man the expression of an erratic departure from traditions
rather than of the perfect adherence to the racial type?
"And the louder the music the bigger the cost of the piper," I observed,
with a laugh.
"Oh, you'll come out all right," he rejoined cheerfully, "things are
never so bad as they might be."
"Well, I don't know that there's much comfort in reflecting that a
thunder-storm might have been accompanied by an earthquake."
For a moment he stood in silence watching the end of his cigar, which
went out in his hand. Then without meeting my eyes he asked in a voice
that had a curiously muffled sound:--
"It's rough on Sally, isn't it? How does she stand it?"
"As she stands everything--like an angel out of heaven."
"Yes, you're right--she is an angel," he returned, still without looking
into my face. An instant later, as if in response to an impulse which
for once rose superior to the dead weight of custom, he blurted out with
a kind of suffering violence, "I say, Ben, you know it's really awful.
I'm so cut up about it I don't know what to do. I wish you'd let me help
you out of this hole till you're on your feet. I've got nobody on me,
you see, and I can't spend half of my income."
For the first time in our long acquaintance the tables were turned; it
was George who was awkward now, and I who was perfectly at my ease.
"I can't do that, George," I said quietly, "but I'm grateful to you all
the same. You're a first-rate chap."
We shook hands with a grip, and while he still lingered to strike a
match and light the fresh cigar he had taken from his case, the little
yellow flame followed, like an illuminated pointer, the expression of
suffering violence which showed so strangely upon his face. Then,
tossing the match into the gutter, he went on his way, while I passed
the great scarred body of the sycamore and hurried down the long hill,
which I never descended without recalling, as the General had said, that
I had once "toted potatoes for John Chitling."
At the beginning of the next block, I saw the miniature box hedge and
the clipped yew in the little garden of Dr. Theophilus, and as I turned
down the side street, the face of the old man looked at me from the
midst of some leafless red currant bushes that grew in clumps at the end
of the walk.
"Come in, Ben, come in a minute," he called, beaming at me over his
lowered spectacles, "there's a thing or two I should like to say."
As I entered the garden and walked along the tiny path, bordered by
oyster shells, to the red currant bushes beyond, he laid his
pruning-knife on the ground, and sat down on an old bench beside a
little green table, on which a sparrow was hopping about. On his
seventy-fifth birthday he had resigned his profession to take to
gardening, and I had heard from no less an authority than the General
that "that old fool Theophilus was spending more money in roses than
Mrs. Clay was making out of pickles."
"What is it, doctor?" I asked, for, oppressed by my own burdens, I
waited a little impatiently to hear "the thing or two" he wanted to say.
"You see I've given up people, Ben, and taken to roses," he began, while
I stood grinding my heel into the gravelled walk; "and it's a good
change, too, when you come to my years, there's no doubt of that. If you
weed and water them and plant an occasional onion about their roots you
can make roses what you want--but you can't people--no, not even when
you've helped to bring them into the world. No matter how straight they
come at birth, they're all just as liable as not to take an inward crank
and go crooked before the end." He looked thoughtfully at the sparrow
hopping about on the green table, and his face, beautiful with the
wisdom of more than seventy years, was illumined by a smile which seemed
in some way a part of the April sunshine flooding the clumps of red
currant bushes and the miniature box. "George--I mean old George--was
telling me about you, Ben," he went on after a minute, "and as soon as I
heard of your troubles, I said to Tina--'We've got a roof and we've got
a bite, so they'll come to us.' What with Tina's pickling and preserving
we manage to keep a home, my boy, and you're more than welcome to share
it with us--you and Sally and your little Benjamin--"
"Doctor--doctor--" was all I could say, for words failed me, and I,
also, stood looking thoughtfully at the sparrow hopping about on the
green table, with eyes that saw two small brown feathered bodies in the
place where, a minute before, there had been but one.
"Come when you're ready, come when you're ready," he repeated, "and
we'll make you welcome, Tina and I."
I grasped his hand without speaking, and as I wrung it in my own, I felt
that it was long and fine and nervous,--the hand, not of a worker, but
of a dreamer. Then tearing my gaze from the sparrow, I went back through
the clump of red currant bushes, and between the shining rows of oyster
shells, to the busy street which led to a busy world and my office door.
A fortnight later the house was sold over our heads, and when I came up
in the afternoon, I found a red flag flying at the gate, and the dusty
buggies of a few real estate men tied to the young maples on the
sidewalk. Upstairs Sally was sitting on a couch, in the midst of the
scattered furniture, while George Bolingbroke stood looking ruefully at
a pile of silver and bric-a-brac that filled the centre of the floor.
"Are you laughing now, Sally?" I asked desperately, as I entered.
"Not just this minute, dear, because that awful man and a crowd of
people have been going over the house, and Aunt Euphronasia and I locked
ourselves in the nursery. I'll begin again, however, as soon as they've
gone. All these things belong to George. It was silly of him to buy
them, but he says he had no idea of allowing them to go to strangers."
"Well, George as well as anybody, I suppose," I responded, moodily.
Beside the window Aunt Euphronasia was rocking slowly back and forth,
with little Benjamin fast asleep on her knees, and her great rolling
eyes, rimmed with white, passed from me to George and from George to me
with a defiant and angry look.
"I ain' seen nuttin' like dese yer doin's sence war time," she grumbled;
"en hit's wuss den war time, caze war time hit's fur all, en dish yer
hit ain't fur nobody cep'n us."
Throwing herself back on the pillow, Sally lay for a minute with her
hand over her eyes.
"I can laugh now," she said at last, raising her head, and she, also, as
she sat there, pale and weary but bravely smiling, glanced from me to
George with a perplexed, inscrutable look. A minute later, when George
made some pleasant, comforting remark and went down to join the crowd
gathered before the door, her gaze still followed him, a little
pensively, as he left the room. The bruise throbbed again; and walking
to the window, I stood looking through the partly closed blinds to the
street below, where I could see the dusty buggies, the switching tails
of the horses, bothered by flies, and the group of real estate men,
lounging, while they spat tobacco juice, by the red flag at the gate. In
the warm air, which was heavy with the scent of a purple catalpa tree on
the corner, the drawling voice of the auctioneer could be heard like the
loud droning of innumerable bees. A carriage passed down the street in a
cloud of dust, and the very dust, as it drifted toward us, was drenched
with the heady perfume of the catalpa.
"That tree makes me dizzy," I said; "it's odd I never minded it before."
"You aren't well--that's the trouble--but even if you were, the voice of
that man down there is enough to drive any sane person crazy. He sounds
exactly as if he were intoning a church service over our misfortunes.
That is certainly adding horror to humiliation," she finished with
merriment.
"At any rate he doesn't humiliate you?"
"Of course he doesn't. Imagine one of the Blands and the Fairfaxes being
humiliated by an auctioneer! He amuses me, even though it is our woes he
is singing about. If I were Aunt Mitty, I'd probably be seated on the
front porch with my embroidery at this minute, bowing calmly to the
passers-by, as if it were the most matter-of-fact occurrence in the
world to have an auctioneer selling one's house over one's head."
"Dear old enemy, I wonder what she thinks of this?"
"She hasn't heard it, probably. A newspaper never enters her doors, and
do you believe she has a relative who would be reckless enough to break
it to her?"
"I hope she hasn't, anyhow."
"They haven't had time to go to her. They have all been here. People
have been coming all day with offers of help--even Jessy's Mr.
Cottrel--and oh, Ben, she told me she meant to marry him! Bonny Page," a
little sob broke from her, "Bonny Page wanted to give up her trip to
Europe and have me take the money. Then everybody's been sending me
luncheons and jellies and things just exactly as if I were an invalid."
"Hit's de way dey does in war time, honey," remarked Aunt Euphronasia,
shaking little Benjamin with the slow, cradling movement of the arms
known only to the negroes.
Downstairs the auction was over, the drawling monologue was succeeded by
a babel of voices, and glancing through the blinds, I saw the real
estate men untying their horses from the young maples. A swirl of dust
laden with the scent of the catalpa blew up from the street.
"But we can't take help, Sally," I said, almost fiercely.
"No, we can't take help, I told them so--I told them that we didn't need
it. In a few years we'd be back where we were, I said, and I believed
it."
"Do you believe it after listening to that confounded fog-horn on the
porch?"
"Well, it's a trial to faith, as Aunt Mitty would say, but, oh, Ben, I
really _do_ believe it still."
CHAPTER XXVII
WE CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND US
It was a warm spring afternoon when we closed the door behind us for the
last time, and took the car for Church Hill, where we had rented several
rooms on the first floor of the house with the enchanted garden. As the
car descended into the neighbourhood of the Old Market, with its tightly
packed barrooms, its squalid junk shops, its strings of old clothes
waving before darkened, ill-smelling doorways, I seemed to have stepped
suddenly backward into a place that was divided between the dream and
the actuality. I remembered my awakening on the pile of straw, with the
face of John Chitling beaming down on me over the wheelbarrow of
vegetables; and the incidents of that morning--the long line of stalls
giving out brilliant flashes from turnips and onions, the sharp, fishy
odour from the strings of mackerel and perch, the very bloodstains on
the apron and rolled-up sleeves of the butcher--all these things were
more vivid to my consciousness than were the faces of Sally and of Aunt
Euphronasia, or the fretful cries of little Benjamin, swathed in a blue
veil, in the old negress's lap. I had meant to make good that morning,
when I had knelt there sorting the yellow apples. I had made good for a
time, and yet to-day I was back in the place from which I had started.
Well, not in the same place, perhaps, but my foot had slipped on the
ladder, and I must begin again, if not from the very bottom, at least
from the middle rung. The market wagons, covered with canvas, were still
standing with empty shafts in the littered street, as if they had waited
there, a shelter for prowling dogs, until my return. Mrs. Chitling's
slovenly doorstep I could not see, but as we ascended the long hill on
the other side, I recognised the musty "old clothes" shop, in which I
had stumbled on "Sir Charles Grandison" and Johnson's Dictionary. That
minute, I understood now, had been in reality the turning-point in my
career. In that close-smelling room I had come to the cross-roads of
success or failure, and swerving aside from the dull level of ignorance,
I had rushed, almost by accident, into the better way. The very odour of
the place was still in my nostrils--a mixture of old clothes, of stale
cheese, of overripe melons. A sudden dizziness seized me, and a wave of
physical nausea passed over me, as if the intense heat of that past
summer afternoon had gone to my head.
The car stopped at the corner of old Saint John's; we got out, assisting
Aunt Euphronasia, and then turned down a side street in the direction of
our new home. As we mounted the curving steps, Sally passed a little
ahead of me, and looked back with her hand on the door.
"I am happy, Ben," she said with a smile; and with the words on her
lips, she crossed the threshold and entered the wide hall, where the
moth-eaten stags' heads, worn bare of fur, still hung on the faded
plaster.
My first impression upon entering the room was that the strange
surroundings struck with a homelike and familiar aspect upon my
consciousness. Then, as bewilderment gave place before a closer
scrutiny, I saw that this aspect was due to the presence of the objects
by which I had been so long accustomed to see Sally surrounded. Her
amber satin curtains hung at the windows; the deep couch, with the amber
lining, upon which she rested before dressing for dinner, stood near the
hearth; and even the two crystal vases, which I had always seen holding
fresh flowers upon her small, inlaid writing desk, were filled now with
branching clusters of American Beauty roses. Beyond them, and beyond the
amber satin curtains at the long window, I saw the elm boughs arching
against a pale gold sunset into which a single swallow was flying. And I
remember that swallow as I remember the look, swift, expectant, as if
it, also, were flying, that trembled, for an instant, on Sally's face.
"It is George," she said, turning to me with radiant eyes; "George has
done this. These are the things he bought, and I wondered so what he
would do with them." Then before something in my face, the radiance died
out of her eyes. "Would you rather he didn't do it? Would you rather I
shouldn't keep them?" she asked.
A struggle began within me. Through the window I could see still the
pale gold sunset beyond the elms, but the swallow was gone, and gone,
also, from Sally's face was the look as of one flying.
"Would you rather that I shouldn't keep them?" she asked again, and her
voice was very gentle.
At that gentleness the struggle ceased as sharply as it had begun.
"Do as you choose, darling, you know far better than I," I replied; and
bending over her, I raised her chin that was lowered, and kissed her
lips.
A light, a bloom, something that was fragrant and soft as the colour and
scent of the American Beauty roses, broke over her as she looked up at
me with her mouth still opening under my kiss.
"Then I'll keep them," she answered, "because it would hurt him so, Ben,
if I sent them back."
The colour and bloom were still there, but in my heart a chill had
entered to drive out the warmth. My ruin, my failure, the poverty to
which I had brought Sally and the child through my inordinate ambition,
and the weight of the two hundred thousand dollars of debt on my
shoulders--all these things returned to my memory, with an additional
heaviness, like a burden that has been lifted only to drop back more
crushingly. And as always in my thoughts now, this sense of my failure
came to me in the image of George Bolingbroke, with his air of generous
self-sufficiency, as if he needed nothing because he had been born to
the possession of all necessary things.
Sally drew the long pins from her hat, laid them, with the floating
white veil and her coat, on a chair in one corner, and began to move
softly about in her restful, capable way. Her very presence, I had once
said of her, would make a home, and I remembered this a little later as
I watched the shadow of her head flit across the faded walls above the
fine old wainscoting, from which the white paint was peeling in places.
Her touch, swift and unfaltering, released some spirit of beauty and
cheerfulness which must have lain imprisoned for a generation in the
superb old rooms. On the floor with us there were no other tenants, but
when I heard an occasional sound in the room above, I remembered that
the agent had told me of an aristocratic, though poverty-stricken,
maiden lady, who was starving up there in the midst of some rare pieces
of old Chippendale furniture, and with the portrait of an English
ancestress by Gainsborough hanging above her fireless hearth.
"The baby is asleep, so Aunt Euphronasia and I are cooking supper," said
Sally, when she had spread the cloth over the little table, and laid
covers for two on either side of the shaded lamp; "at least she's
cooking and I'm serving. Come into the garden, Ben, before it's ready,
and run with me down the terrace."
"The garden is ruined. I saw it when I came over with the agent."
"Ruined? And with such lilacs! They are a little late because of the
cold spring, but a perfect bower."
She caught my hand as she spoke, and we passed together through the long
window leading from our bedroom to the porch, where a few startled
swallows flew out, crying harshly, from among the white columns. Many of
the elms had died; the magnolias and laburnums, with the exception of a
few stately trees, had decayed on the terrace, and the thick maze of box
was now thin and rapidly dwindling away from the gravelled paths. On the
ground, under the young green of dandelion and wild violets, the rotting
leaves of last year were still lying; and as we descended the steps, and
followed the littered walks down the hill-side, broken pieces of pottery
crumbled beneath our feet.
Clasping hands like two children, we stood for a minute in silence, with
our eyes on the ruin before us, and the memory of the enchanted garden
and our first love in our thoughts. Then, "Oh, Ben, the lilacs!" said
Sally, softly.
They were there on all sides, floating like purple and white clouds in
the wind, and shedding their delicious perfume over the scattered rose
arbours and the dwindling box. Light, delicate, and brave, they had
withstood frost and decay, while the latticed summer houses had fallen
under the weight of the microphylla roses that grew over them. The wind
now was laden with their sweetness, and the golden light seemed aware of
their colour as it entered the garden softly through the screen of
boughs.
"Do you remember the first day, Ben?"
"The first day? That was when President lifted me on the wall--and even
the wall has gone."
"Did you dream then that you'd ever stand here with me like this?"
"I dreamed nothing else. I've never dreamed anything else."
"Then you aren't so very unhappy as long as we are together?"
"Not so unhappy as I might be, but, remember, I'm a man, Sally, and I
have failed."
"Yes, you're a man, and you couldn't be happy even with me--without
something else."
"The something else is a part of you. It belongs to you, and that's
mostly why I want to make good. These debts are like a dead weight--like
the Old Man of the Sea--on my shoulders. Until I'm able to shake them
off, I shall not stand up straight."
"I'm glad you've gone back to the railroad."
"There are a lot of men in the railroad, and very few places. The
General found me this job at six thousand a year, which is precious
little for a man of my earning capacity. They'll probably want to send
me down South to build up the traffic on the Tennessee and Carolina,--I
don't know. It will take me a month anyway to wind up my affairs and
start back with the road. Oh, it's going to be a long, hard pull when it
once begins."
Pressing her cheek to my arm, she rubbed it softly up and down with a
gentle caress. "Well, we'll pull it, never fear," she responded.
At our feet the twilight rose slowly from the sunken terrace, and the
perfume of the lilacs seemed to grow stronger as the light faded. For a
moment we stood drawn close together; then turning, with my arm still
about her, we went back over the broken pieces of pottery, and ascending
the steps, left the pearly afterglow and the fragrant stillness behind
us.
Half an hour later, when we were in the midst of our supper, which she
had served with gaiety and I had eaten with sadness, a hesitating knock
came at the door leading into the dim hall, and opening it with
surprise, I was confronted by a small, barefooted urchin, who stood,
like the resurrected image of my own childhood, holding a covered dish
at arm's length before him.
"If you please, ma'am," he said, under my shoulder, to Sally, who was
standing behind me, "ma's jest heard you'd moved over here, an' she's
sent you some waffles for supper."
"And what may ma's name be?" enquired Sally politely, as she removed the
red and white napkin which covered the gift.
"Ma's Mrs. Titterbury, an' she lives jest over yonder. She says she's
been a-lookin' out for you an' she hopes you've come to stay."
"That's very kind of her, and I'm much obliged. Tell her to come to see
me."
"She's a-comin', ma'am," he responded cheerfully, and as he withdrew,
his place was immediately filled by a little girl in a crimson calico,
with two very tight and very slender braids hanging down to her waist in
the back.
"Ma's been makin' jelly an' syllabub, an' she thought you might like a
taste," she said, offering a glass dish. "Her name is Mrs. Barley, an'
she lives around the corner."
"These are evidently our poorer neighbours," observed Sally, as the door
closed after the crimson calico and the slender braids; "where are the
well-to-do ones that live in all the big houses around us?"
"It probably never occurred to them that we might want a supper. It's
the poor who have imagination. By Jove! there's another!"
This time it was a stout, elderly female in rusty black, with a very red
face, whom, after some frantic groping of memory, I recognised as Mrs.
Cudlip, unaltered apparently by her thirty years of widowhood.
"I jest heard you'd moved back over here, Benjy," she remarked, and at
the words and the voice, I seemed to shrink again into the small,
half-scared figure clad in a pair of shapeless breeches which were made
out of an old dolman my mother had once worn to funerals, "an' I thought
as you might like a taste of muffins made arter the old receipt of yo'
po' ma's--the very same kind of muffins she sent me by you on the
mornin' arter I buried my man."
Placing the dish upon the table, she seated herself, in response to an
invitation from Sally, and spread her rusty black skirt, with a
leisurely movement, over her comfortable lap. As I looked at her, I
forgot that I stood six feet two inches in my stockings; I forgot that I
had married a descendant of the Blands and the Fairfaxes; and I
remembered as plainly as if it were yesterday, the morning of the
funeral, when, with my mother's grey blanket shawl pinned on my
shoulders, I had sat on the step outside and waited for the service to
end, while I made scornful faces at the merry driver of the hearse.
"It's been going on thirty years sence yo' ma died, ain't it, Benjy?"
she enquired, while I struggled vainly to recover a proper consciousness
of my size and my importance.
"I was a little chap at the time, Mrs. Cudlip," I returned.
"An' it's been twenty, I reckon," she pursued reminiscently, "sence yo'
pa was took. Wall, wall, time does fly when you come to think of deaths,
now, doesn't it? I al'ays said thar wa'nt nothin' so calculated to put
cheer an' spirit into you as jest to remember the people who've dropped
off an' died while you've been spared. You didn't see much of yo' pa
durin' his last days, did you?"
"Never after I ran away, and that was the night he brought his second
wife home."
"He had a hard time toward the end, but I reckon she had a harder. It
wa'nt that he was a bad man at bottom, but he was soft-natured an' easy,
an' what he needed was to be helt an' to be helt steady. Some men air
like that--they can't stand alone a minute without beginnin' to wobble.
Now as long as yo' ma lived, she kept a tight hand on yo' pa, an' he
stayed straight; but jest as soon as he was left alone, he began to
wobble, an' from wobblin' he took to the bottle, and from the bottle he
took to that brass-headed huzzy he married. She was the death of him,
Benjy; I ought to know, for I lived next do' to 'em to the day of his
burial. As to that, anyway, ma'am," she added to Sally, "my humble
opinion is that women have killed mo' men anyway than they've ever
brought into the world. It's a po' thought, I've al'ays said, in which
you can't find some comfort."
"You were very kind to him, I have heard," I observed, as she paused for
breath and turned toward me.
"It wa'nt mo'n my duty if I was, Benjy, for yo' ma was a real good
neighbour to me, an' many's the plate of buttered muffins you've brought
to my do' when you wa'nt any higher than that."
It was true, I admitted the fact as gracefully as I could.
"My mother thought a great deal of you," I remarked.
"You don't see many of her like now," she returned with a sigh, "the
mo's the pity. 'Thar ain't room for two in marriage,' she used to say,
'one of 'em has got to git an' I'd rather 'twould be the other!' 'Twa'nt
that way with the palaverin' yaller-headed piece that yo' pa married
arterwards. She'd a sharp enough tongue, but a tongue don't do you much
good with a man unless he knows you've got the backbone behind to drive
it. It ain't the tongue, but the backbone that counts in marriage. At
first he was mighty soft, but befo' two weeks was up he'd begun to beat
her, an' I ain't got a particle of respect for a woman that's once been
beaten. Men air born mean, I know, it's thar natur, an' the good Lord
intended it; but, all the same, it's my belief that mighty few women
come in for a downright beatin' unless they've bent thar backs to
welcome it. It takes two to make a beatin' the same as a courtin', an'
whar the back ain't ready, the blows air slow to fall."
"I never saw her but once, and then I ran away," I remarked to fill in
her pause.
"Wall, you didn't miss much, or you either, ma'am," she rejoined
politely; "she was the kind that makes an honest woman ashamed to belong
to a sex that's got to thrive through foolishness, an' to git to a place
by sidlin' backwards. That wa'nt yo' ma's way, Benjy, an' I've often
said that I don't believe she ever hung back in her life an' waited for
a man to hand her what she could walk right up an' take holt of without
his help. 'The woman that waits on a man has got a long wait ahead of
her,' was what she used to say."
Rising to her feet, she stood with the empty plate in her hand, and her
back ceremoniously bent in a parting bow.
"Is that yo' youngest? Now, ain't he a fine baby!" she burst out, as
little Benjamin appeared, crowing, in the arms of Aunt Euphronasia, "an
he's got all the soft, pleasant look of yo' po' pa a'ready."
I opened the door, and with a last effusive good-by, she passed out in
her stiff, rustling black, which looked as if she had gone into
perpetual mourning.
"Will you have some syllabub, Ben?" enquired Sally primly, as the door
closed.
"Sally, how will you stand it?"
"She wants to be kind--she really wants to be."
Crossing moodily to the table, I pushed aside the waffles, the muffins,
and the syllabub, with an angry gesture.
"It is what I came from, after all. It is my class."
"Your class?" she repeated, laughing and sobbing together with her arms
on my shoulders. "There's nobody else in the whole world in your class,
Ben."
CHAPTER XXVIII
IN WHICH SALLY STOOPS
A week or two later the General stopped me as I was leaving his office.
"I don't like the look of you, Ben. What's the matter?"
"My head has been troubling me, General. It's been splitting for a week,
and I can't see straight."
"You've thought too much, that's the mischief. Why not cut the whole
thing and go West with me to-morrow in my car? I'll be gone for a
month."
"It's out of the question. A man who is over head and ears in debt
oughtn't to be spinning about the country in a private car."
"I don't see the logic of that as long as it's somebody else's car."
"You'd see it if you had two hundred thousand dollars of debt."
"Well, I've been worse off. I've had two hundred thousand devils of
gout. Here, come along with me. Bring Sally, bring the youngster. I'll
take the whole bunch of 'em."
When I declined, he still urged me, showing his annoyance plainly, as a
man does in whom opposition even in trifles arouses a resentful, almost
a violent, spirit of conquest. So, I knew, he had pursued every aim,
great or small, of his life, with the look in his face of an intelligent
bulldog, and the conviction somewhere in his brain that the only method
of overcoming an obstacle was to hang on, if necessary, until the
obstacle grew too weak to put forth further resistance. Once, and once
only, to my knowledge, had this power to hang on, this bulldog grip,
availed him but little, and that was when his violence had encountered a
gentleness as soft as velvet, yet as inflexible as steel. In his whole
life only poor little Miss Matoaca had withstood him; and as I met the
angry, indomitable spirit in his eyes, there rose before me the figure
of his old love, with her look of meek, unconquerable obstinacy and with
the faint fragrance and colour about her that was like the fragrance and
colour of faded rose-leaves.
"There's no use, General. I can't do it," I said at last; and parting
from him at the corner, I signalled the car for Church Hill, while he
drove slowly up-town in his buggy.
It was a breathless June afternoon. A spell of intense early heat had
swept over the country, and the summer flowers were unfolding as if
forced open in the air of a hothouse. At the door Sally met me with a
telegram from Jessy announcing her marriage to Mr. Cottrel in New York;
but the words and the fact seemed to me to have no nearer relation to my
life than if they had described the romantic adventures of a girl, in a
crimson blouse, who was passing along the pavement.
"Well, she's got what she wanted." I remarked indifferently, "so she's
to be congratulated, I suppose. My head is throbbing as if it would
break open. I'll go in and lie down in the dusk, before supper."
"Do the flowers bother you? Shall I take them away?" she asked,
following me into the bedroom, and closing the shutters.
"I don't notice them. This confounded headache is the only thing I can
think of. It hasn't let up a single minute."
Bending over me, she laid her cheek to mine, and stroked the hair back
from my forehead with her small, cool hand, which reminded me of the
touch of roses. Then going softly out, she closed the door after her,
while I turned on my side, and lay, half asleep, half awake, in the
deepening twilight.
From the garden, through the open blinds of the green shutters, floated
the strong, sweet scent of the jessamine blooming on the columns of the
piazza; and I heard, now and then, as if from a great distance, the
harsh, frightened cry of a swallow as it flew out from its nest under
the roof. A sudden, sharp realisation of imperative duties left undone
awoke in my mind; and I felt impelled, as if by some outward pressure,
to rise and go back again down the long, hot hill into the city.
"There's something important I meant to do, and did not," I thought; "as
soon as this pain stops, I suppose I shall remember it, and why it is so
urgent. If I can only sleep for a few minutes, my brain will clear, and
then I can think it out, and everything that is so confused now will be
easy." In some way, I knew that this neglected duty concerned Sally and
the child. I had been selfish with Sally in my misery. When I awoke with
a clear head, I would go to her and say I was sorry.
The scent of the jessamine became suddenly so intense that I drew the
coverlet over my face in the effort to shut it out. Then turning my eyes
to the wall, I lay without thinking or feeling, while my consciousness
slowly drifted outside the closed room and the penetrating fragrance of
the garden beyond. Once it seemed to me that somebody came in a dream
and bent over me, stroking my forehead. At first I thought it was Sally,
until the roughness of the hand startled me, and opening my eyes, I saw
that it was my mother, in her faded grey calico, with the perplexed and
anxious look in her eyes, as if she, too, were trying to remember some
duty which was very important, and which she had half forgotten. "Why, I
thought you were dead!" I exclaimed aloud, and the sound of my own voice
waked me.
It was broad daylight now; the shutters were open, and the breeze,
blowing through the long window, brought the scent of jessamine
distilled in the sunshine beyond. It seemed to me that I had slept
through an eternity, and with my first waking thought, there revived the
same pressure of responsibility, the same sense of duties, unfulfilled
and imperative, with which I had turned to the wall and drawn the
coverlet over my face. "I must get up," I said aloud; and then, as I
lifted my hand, I saw that it was wasted and shrunken, and that the blue
veins showed through the flesh as through delicate porcelain. Then,
"I've been ill," I thought, and "Sally? Sally?" The effort of memory was
too great for me, and without moving my body, I lay looking toward the
long window, where Aunt Euphronasia sat, in the square of sunshine,
crooning to little Benjamin, while she rocked slowly back and forth,
beating time with her foot to the music.
"Oh, we'll ride in de golden cha'iot, by en bye, lil' chillun,
We'll ride in de golden cha'iot, by en bye.
Oh, we'se all gwine home ter glory, by en bye, lil' chillun,
We'se all gwine home ter glory by en bye.
Oh, we'll drink outer de healin' fountain, by en bye, lil' chillun,
We'll drink outer de healin' fountain by en bye."
"Sally!" I called aloud, and my voice sounded thin and distant in my own
ears.
There was the sound of quick steps, the door opened and shut, and Sally
came in and leaned over me. She wore a blue gingham apron over her
dress, her sleeves were rolled up, and her hand, when it touched my
face, felt warm and soft as if it had been plunged into hot soapsuds.
Then my eyes fell on a jagged burn on her wrist.
"What is that?" I asked, pointing to it. "You've hurt yourself."
"Oh, Ben, my dearest, are you really awake?"
"What is that, Sally? You have hurt yourself."
"I burned my hand on the stove--it is nothing. Dearest, are you better?
Wait. Don't speak till you take your nourishment."
She went out, returning a moment later with a glass of milk and whiskey,
which she held to my lips, sitting on the bedside, with her arm slipped
under my pillow.
"How long have I been ill, Sally?"
"Several weeks. You became conscious and then had a relapse. Do you
remember?"
"No, I remember nothing."
"Well, don't talk. Everything is all right--and I'm so happy to have you
alive I could sing the Jubilee, as Aunt Euphronasia says."
"Several weeks and there was no money! Of course, you went to the
General, Sally--but I forgot, the General is away. You went to somebody,
though. Surely you got help?"
"Oh, I managed, Ben. There's nothing to worry about now that you are
better. I feel that there'll never be anything to worry about again."
"But several weeks, Sally, and I lying like a log, and the General away!
What did you do?"
"I nursed you for one thing, and gave you medicine and chicken broth and
milk and whiskey. Now, I shan't talk any more until the doctor comes.
Lie quiet and try to sleep."
But the jagged burn on her wrist still held my gaze, and catching her
hand as she turned away, I pressed my lips to it with all my strength.
"Your hand feels so queer, Sally. It's as red as if it had been
scalded."
"I've been cooking my dinner, and you see I eat a great deal. There,
now, that's positively my last word."
Bending over, she kissed me hurriedly, a tear fell on my face, and then
before I could catch the fluttering hem of her apron, she had broken
from me, and gone out, closing the door after her. For a minute I lay
perfectly motionless, too weak for thought. Then opening my eyes with an
effort, I stared straight up at the white ceiling, against which a green
June beetle was knocking with a persistent, buzzing sound that seemed an
accompaniment to the crooning lullaby of Aunt Euphronasia.
"Oh, we'se all gwine home ter glory, by en bye, lil' chillun,
We'se all gwine home ter glory, by en bye."
"Will he break his wings on the ceiling, or will he fly out of the
window?" I thought drowsily, and it appeared to me suddenly that my
personal troubles--my illness, my anxiety for Sally, and even the
poverty that must have pressed upon her--had receded to an obscure and
cloudy distance, in which they became less important in my mind than the
problem of the green June beetle knocking against the ceiling. "Will he
break his wings or will he fly out?" I asked, with a dull interest in
the event, which engrossed my thoughts to the exclusion of all personal
matters. "I ought to think of Sally and the child, but I can't. My head
won't let me. It has gone wrong, and if I begin to think hard thoughts
I'll go delirious again. There is jessamine blooming somewhere. Did she
have a spray in her hair when she bent over me? Why did she wear a
gingham apron at a ball instead of pink tarlatan? No, that was not the
problem I had to solve. Will he break his wings or will he fly out?"
"Oh, we'll fit on de golden slippers, by en bye, lil' chillun,"
crooned Aunt Euphronasia, rocking little Benjamin in the square of
sunlight.
The song soothed me and I slept for a minute. Then starting awake in the
cold sweat of terror, I struggled wildly after the problem which still
eluded me.
"Has he flown out?" I asked.
"Who, Marse Ben?" enquired the old negress, stopping her rocking and her
lullaby at the same instant.
"The June beetle. I thought he'd break his wings on the ceiling."
"Go 'way f'om hyer, honey, he ain' gwine breck 'is wings. Dar's moughty
little sense inside er dem, but dey ain' gwine do dat. Is yo' wits done
come back?"
"Not quite. I feel crazy. Aunt Euphronasia!"
"W'at you atter, Marse Ben?"
"How did Sally manage?"
"Ef'n hit's de las' wud I speak, she's done managed jes exactly ez ef'n
she wuz de Lawd A'moughty."
"And she didn't suffer?"
"Who? She? Dar ain' none un us suffer, honey, we'se all been livin' on
de ve'y fat er de lan', we is. Dar's been roas' pig en shoat e'vy
blessed day fur dinner."
She had talked me down, and I turned over again and lay in silence,
until Sally came in with a dose of medicine and a cup of broth.
"Have I been very ill, Sally?"
"Very ill. It was the long mental strain, followed by the intense heat.
At one time we feared that a blood vessel was broken. Now, put
everything out of your mind, and get well."
She had taken off her gingham apron, and was wearing one of her last
summer's dresses of flowered organdie. I remembered that I had always
liked it because it had blue roses over it.
"How can I get well when I know that you have been starving?"
"But we haven't been. We've had everything on earth we wanted."
"Then thank God you got help. Whom did you go to?"
Putting the empty glass aside, she began feeding me spoonfuls of broth,
with her arm under my pillow.
"If you will be bad and insist upon knowing--I didn't go to anybody. You
said you couldn't bear being helped, you know."
"I said it--oh, darling--but I didn't think of this!"
"Well, I thought of it, anyway, and I wasn't going to do while you were
ill and helpless what you didn't want me to do when you were well."
"You mean you told nobody all these weeks?"
"Well, I told one or two people, but I didn't accept charity from them.
The General was away, you know, but some people from the office came
over with offers of help--and I told them we needed nothing. Dr.
Theophilus was too far away to treat you, but he has come almost every
day with a pitcher of Mrs. Clay's chicken broth. Oh, we've prospered,
Ben, there's no doubt of that, we've prospered!"
"How soon may I get up?"
"Not for three weeks, and it will be another three weeks even if you're
good, before you can go back to the office."
A sob rose in my throat, but I bit it back fiercely before it passed my
lips.
"Oh, Sally, my darling, why did you marry me?"
"You cruel boy," she returned cheerfully, as she smoothed my pillows,
"when you know that if I hadn't married you there wouldn't be any little
Benjamin in the world."
After this the slow days dragged away, while I consumed chicken broth
and milk punches with a frantic desire to get back my strength. Only to
be on my feet again, and able to lift the burden from Sally's shoulders!
Only to drive that tired look from her eyes, and that patient, divine
smile from her lips! I watched her with jealous longing while I lay
there, helpless as a fallen tree, and I saw that she grew daily thinner,
that the soft redness never left her small, childlike hands, that three
fine, nervous wrinkles had appeared between her arched eyebrows.
Something was killing her, while I, the man who had sworn before God to
cherish her, was but an additional burden on her fragile shoulders. And
yet how I loved her! Never had she seemed to me more lovely, more
desirable, than she did as she moved about my bed in her gingham apron,
with the anxious smile on her lips, and the delicate furrows deepening
between her eyebrows.
"How soon? How soon, Sally?" I asked almost hourly, kissing the scar on
her wrist when she bent over me.
"Be patient, dear."
"I am trying to be patient for your sake, but oh, it's devilish hard!"
"I know it is, Ben. Another week, and you will be up."
"Another week, and this killing you!"
"It isn't killing me. If it were killing me, do you think I could laugh?
And you hear me laugh?"
"Yes, I hear you laugh, and it breaks my heart as I lie here. If I'm
ever up, Sally, if I'm ever well, I'll make you go to bed and I will
slave over you."
"There are many things I'd enjoy more, dear. Going to bed isn't my idea
of happiness."
"Then you shall sit on a cushion and eat nothing but strawberries and
cream."
"That sounds better. Well, there's something I've got to see about, so
I'll leave you with Aunt Euphronasia to look after you. The doctor says
you may have a cup of tea if you're good. We'll make a party together."
An hour or two later, when the afternoon sunshine was shut out by the
green blinds, and the room was filled with a gentle droning sound from
the humming-birds at the jessamine, she drew up the small wicker tea
table to my bedside, and we made the party with merriment. Her eyes were
tired, the three fine nervous wrinkles had deepened between her arched
eyebrows, and the soft redness I had objected to, covered her hands; yet
that spirit of gaiety, which had seemed to me to resemble the spirit of
the bird singing in the old grey house, still showed in her voice and
her smile. As she brewed the tea in the little brown tea-pot and poured
it into the delicate cups, with the faded pattern of moss rosebuds
around the brim, I wondered, half in a dream, from what inexhaustible
source she drew this courage which faced life, not with endurance, but
with blitheness. Were the ghosts of the dead Blands and Fairfaxes from
whom she had sprung fighting over again their ancient battles in their
descendant?
"This is a nice party, isn't it?" she asked, when she had brought the
hot buttered toast from the kitchen and cut it into very small slices on
my plate; "the tea smells deliciously. I paid a dollar and a quarter for
a pound of it this morning."
"If I'm ever rich again you shall pay a million and a quarter, if you
want to."
The charming archness awoke in her eyes, while she looked at me over the
brim of the cup.
"Isn't this just as nice as being rich, Ben?" she asked; "I am really,
you know, a far better cook than Aunt Mehitable."
"All the same I'd rather live on bread and water than have you do it," I
answered.
She lifted her hand, pushing the heavy hair from her forehead, and my
gaze fell on the jagged scar on her wrist. Then, as she caught my
glance, her arm dropped suddenly under the table, and she pulled her
loose muslin sleeve into place.
"Does the burn hurt you, Sally?"
"Not now--it is quite healed. At first it smarted a little."
"Darling, how did you do it?"
"I've forgotten. On the stove, I think."
I fell back on the pillow, too faint, in spite of the tea I had taken,
to follow a thought in which there was so sharp and so incessant a pang.
Before my eyes the little table, with its white cloth and its fragile
china service, decorated with moss rosebuds, appeared to dissolve into
some painful dream distance, in which the sound of the humming-birds at
the jessamine grew gradually louder.
Six days longer I remained in bed, too weak to get into my clothes, or
to stand on my feet, but at the end of that time I was permitted to
struggle to the square of sunlight by the window, where I sat for an
hour with the warm breeze from the garden blowing into my face. For the
first day or two I was unable to rise from the deep chintz-covered
chair, in which Aunt Euphronasia and Sally had placed me; but one
afternoon, when the old negress had returned to the kitchen, and Sally
had gone out on an errand, I disobeyed their orders and crawled out on
the porch, where the scent of the jessamine seemed a part of the summer
sunshine. The next day I ventured as far as the kitchen steps, and found
Aunt Euphronasia plucking a chicken for my broth, with little Benjamin
asleep in his carriage at her side.
"Aunt Euphronasia, do you know where Sally goes every afternoon?" I
enquired.
"Hi! Marse Ben, ain't un 'oman erbleeged ter teck her time off de same
ez a man?" she demanded indignantly. "She cyarn' be everlastin'ly
a-settin' plum at yo' elbow."
"You know perfectly well I'm not such a brute as to be complaining,
mammy."
"Mebbe you ain't, honey, but hit sounds dat ar way ter me."
"If I could only make sure she'd gone to walk, I'd be jolly glad."
"Ef'n you ax me," she retorted contemptuously, "she ain't de sort, suh,
dat's gwineter traipse jes' fur de love er traipsing.'"
There was small comfort, I saw, to be had from her, so turning away,
while she resumed her plucking, I crawled slowly back through the
bedroom into the hall, and along the hall to the front door, which stood
open. Here the dust of the street rose like steam to my nostrils, and
the stone steps and the brick pavement were thickly coated. A
watering-cart turned the corner, scattering a refreshing spray, and
behind it came a troop of thirsty dogs, licking greedily at the water
before it sank into the dust. The foliage of the trees was scorched to a
livid shade, and the ends of the leaves curled upward as if a flame had
blown by them. Down the street, as I stood there, came the old familiar
cry from a covered wagon: "Water-million! Hyer's yo' watermillion fresh
f'om de vine!"
Clinging to the iron railing, which burned my hand, I descended the
steps with trembling limbs, and stood for a minute in the patch of shade
at the bottom. A negro, seated on the curbing, was drinking the juice
from a melon rind, and he looked up at me with rolling eyes, his
gluttonous red lips moving in rapture.
"Dish yer's a moughty good melon, Marster," he said, and returned to his
feast.
As I was about to place my foot on the bottom step and begin the
difficult ascent, my eyes, raised to our sitting-room window, hung
spellbound on a black and white sign fastened against the panes:
"Fine laundering. Old laces a specialty. Desserts made to order."
"Old laces a specialty," I repeated, as if struck by the phrase. Then,
as my strength failed me, I sank on the stone step in the patch of
shade, and buried my face in my hands.
CHAPTER XXIX
IN WHICH WE RECEIVE VISITORS
I was still sitting there, with my head propped in my hands, when my
eyes, which had seen nothing before, saw Sally coming through the hot
dust in the street, with George Bolingbroke, carrying a bundle under his
arm, at her side. As she neared me a perplexed and anxious look--the
look I had seen always on the face of my mother when the day's burden
was heavy--succeeded the smiling brightness with which she had been
speaking to George.
"Why, Ben!" she exclaimed, quickening her steps, "what are you doing out
here in this terrible heat?"
"I got down and couldn't get back," I answered.
"Well, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Here, George, give me the
bundle and help him up."
"He deserves to be left here," remarked George, laughing good-humouredly
as he grasped my arm, and half led, half dragged me up the steps and
into the house. Then, when I was placed in the deep chintz-covered chair
by the window, Sally came in with a milk punch, which she held to my
lips while I drank.
"You're really very foolish, Ben."
"I know all, Sally," I replied, sitting up and pushing the glass and her
hand away, "and I'm going to get up and go back to work to-morrow."
"Then drink this, please, so you will be able to go. I suppose you saw
the sign," she pursued quietly, when I had swallowed the punch; "George
saw it, too, and it put him into a rage."
"What has George got to do with it?" I demanded with a pang in my heart.
"He hasn't anything, of course, but it was kind of him all the same to
want to lend me his money. You see, the way of it was that when you fell
ill, and there wasn't a penny in the house, I remembered how bitterly
you'd hated the idea of taking help."
I caught her hand to my lips. "I'd beg, borrow, or steal for you,
darling."
"You'd neglected to tell me that, so I didn't know. What I did was to
sit down and think hard for an hour, and at the end of that time, when
you were well enough to be left, I got on the car and went over to see
several women, who, I knew, were so rich that they had plenty of old
lace and embroidery. I told them exactly how it was and, of course, they
all wanted to give me money, and Jennie Randolph even sat down and cried
when I wouldn't take it. Then they agreed to let me launder all their
fine lace and embroidered blouses, and I've made desserts and cakes for
some of them and--and--"
"Don't go on, Sally, I can't stand it. I'm a crackbrained fool and I'm
going to cry."
"Of course, the worst part was having to leave you, but when George
found out about it, he insisted upon fetching and carrying my bundles."
"George!" I exclaimed sharply, and a spasm of pain, like the entrance of
poison into an unhealed wound, contracted my heart. "Was that confounded
package under his arm," I questioned, almost angrily, "some of the
stuff?"
"That was a blouse of Maggie Tyler's. He is going to take it back to her
on Friday. There, now, stay quiet, while I run and speak to him. He is
waiting for me in the kitchen."
She went out, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her
to take in washing and for George to deliver it, while, opening the long
green shutters, I sat staring, beyond the humming-birds and the white
columns, to the shimmering haze that hung over the old tea-roses and the
dwindled box in the garden. Here the heat, though it was still visible
to the eyes, was softened and made fragrant by the greenness of the
trees and the grass and by the perfume of the jessamine and the old
tea-roses, dropping their faintly coloured leaves in the sunshine. From
time to time the sounds of the city, grown melancholy and discordant,
like the sounds that one hears in fever, reached me across the
shimmering vagueness of the garden.
And then as I sat there, with folded hands, there came to me, out of
some place, so remote that it seemed a thousand miles away from the
sunny stillness, and yet so near that I knew it existed only within my
soul, a sense of failure, of helplessness, of humiliation. A hundred
casual memories thronged through my mind, and all these memories,
gathering significance from my imagination, plunged me deeper into the
bitter despondency which had closed over my head. I saw the General,
with his little, alert bloodshot eyes, like the eyes of an intelligent
bulldog, with that look of stubbornness, of tenacity, persisting beneath
the sly humour that gleamed in his face, as if he were thinking always
somewhere far back in his brain, "I'll hang on to the death, I'll hang
on to the death." His figure, which, because of that legendary glamour I
had seen surrounding it in childhood, still personified shining success
in my eyes, appeared to add a certain horror to this sense of
helplessness, of failure, that dragged me under. Deep down within me,
down below my love for Sally or for the child, something older than any
emotion, older than any instinct except the instinct of battle, awakened
and passed from passiveness into violence. "Let me but start again in
the race," said this something, "let me but stand once more on my feet."
The despondency, which had been at first formless and vague as mere
darkness, leaped suddenly into a tangible shape, and I felt that the
oppressive weight of the debt on my shoulders was the weight, not of
thought, but of metal. Until that was lifted--until I had struggled
free--I should be crippled, I told myself, not only in ambition, but in
body.
From the detached kitchen, at the end of the short brick walk, overgrown
with wild violets, that led to it, the sound of George's laugh fell on
my ears. Rising to my feet with an effort, I stood, listening, without
thought, to the sound, which seemed to grow vacant and sad as it floated
to me in the warm air over the sunken bricks. Then passing through the
long window, I descended the steps slowly, and stopped in the shadow of
a pink crape myrtle that grew near the kitchen doorway. Again the
merriment came to me, Sally's laughter mingling this time with George's.
"No, that will never do. This is the way," she said, in her sparkling
voice, which reminded me always of running water.
"Sally!" I called, and moving nearer, I paused at the kitchen step,
while she came quickly forward, with some white, filmy stuff she had
just rinsed in the tub still in her hands.
"Why, here's Ben!" she exclaimed. "You bad boy, when I told you
positively not to get up out of that chair!"
A gingham apron was pinned over her waist and bosom, her sleeves were
rolled back, and I saw the redness from the hot soapsuds rising from her
hands to her elbows.
"For God's sake, Sally, what are you doing?" I demanded, and reaching
out, as I swayed slightly, I caught the lintel of the door for support.
"I'm washing and George is splitting kindling wood," she replied
cheerfully, shaking out the white, filmy stuff with an upward movement
of her bare arms; "the boy who splits the wood never came--I think he
ate too many currants yesterday--and if George hadn't offered his
services as man of all work, I dread to think what you and Aunt
Euphronasia would have eaten for supper."
"It's first-rate work for the muscles, Ben," remarked George, flinging
an armful of wood on the brick floor, and kneeling beside the stove to
kindle a fire in the old ashes. "I haven't a doubt but it's better for
the back and arms than horseback riding. All the same," he added, poking
vigorously at the smouldering embers, "I'm going to wallop that boy as
soon as I've got this fire started."
"You won't have time to do that until you've delivered the day's
washing," rejoined Sally, with merriment.
"Yes, I shall. I'll stop on my way--that boy comes first," returned
George with a grim, if humorous, determination.
This humour, this lightness, and above all this gallantry, which was so
much a part of the older civilisation to which they belonged, wrought
upon my disordered nerves with a feeling of anger. Here, at last, I had
run against that "something else" of the Blands', apart from wealth,
apart from position, apart even from blood, of which the General had
spoken. Miss Mitty might go in rags and do her own cooking, he had said,
but as long as she possessed this "something else," that supported her,
she would preserve to the end, in defiance of circumstances, her
terrible importance.
"You know I don't care a bit what I eat, Sally!" I blurted out, in a
temper.
"Well, you may not, dear, but George and I do," she rejoined, pinning
the white stuff on a clothes-line she had stretched between the door and
the window, "we are both interested, you see, in getting you back to
work. There's the door-bell, George. You may wash your hands at the sink
and answer it. If it's the butter, bring it to me, and if it's a caller,
let him wait, while I turn down my sleeves."
Rising from his knees, George washed his hands at the sink, and went out
along the brick walk to the house, while I stood in the doorway, under
the shadow of the pink crape myrtle, and made a vow in my heart.
"Sally," I said at last in the agony of desperation, "you ought to have
married George."
With her arms still upraised to the clothes-line, she looked round at me
over her shoulder.
"He is useful in an emergency," she admitted; "but, after all, the
emergency isn't the man, you know."
I was about to press the point home to conscience, when George,
returning along the walk, announced with the mock solemnity of a footman
in livery, that the callers were Dr. Theophilus and the General, who
awaited us in the sitting-room.
"There's no hurry, Sally," he added; "they started over to condole with
you, I imagine, but they've both become so absorbed in discussing this
neighbourhood as it was fifty years ago, that I honestly believe they've
entirely forgotten that you live here."
"Well, we'll have to remind them," said Sally, with a laugh; and when
she had rolled down her sleeves and tidied her hair before the cracked
mirror on the wall, we went back to the house, where we found the two
old men engaged in a violent controversy over the departed inhabitants
of Church Hill.
"I tell you, Theophilus, it wasn't Robert Carrington, but his brother
Bushrod that lived in that house!" exclaimed the General, as we entered;
and he concluded--while he shook hands with us, in the tone of one who
forever clinches an argument, "I can take you this minute straight over
there to his grave in Saint John's Churchyard. How are you, Ben, glad to
see you up," he observed in an absent-minded manner. "Have you got a
palm-leaf fan around, Sally? I can't get through these sweltering
afternoons without a fan. What do you think Theophilus is arguing about
now? He is trying to prove to me that it was Robert Carrington, not
Bushrod, who lived in that big house at the top of the hill. Why, I tell
you I knew Bushrod Carrington as well as I did my own brother, sir."
He sat far back in his chair, pursing his full red lips angrily, like a
whimpering child, and fanning himself with short, excited movements of
the palm-leaf fan. His determined, mottled face was covered thickly with
fine drops of perspiration.
"I knew Robert very intimately," remarked the doctor, in a peaceable
voice. "He married Matty Price, and I was the best man at his wedding.
They lived unhappily, I believe, but he told me on his death-bed--I
attended him in his last illness--that he would do it over again if he
had to re-live his life. 'I never had a dull minute after I married her,
doctor,' he said, 'I lived with her for forty years and I never knew
what was coming next till she died.'"
"Robert was a fool," commented the General, brusquely, "a long
white-livered, studious fellow that dragged around at his wife's apron
strings. Couldn't hold a candle to his brother Bushrod. When I was a
boy, Bushrod Carrington--he was nearer my father's age than mine--was
the greatest dandy and duellist in the state. Got all his clothes in
Paris, and I can see him now, as plainly as if it were yesterday, when
he used to come to church in a peachblow brocade waistcoat of a foreign
fashion, and his hair shining with pomatum. Yes, he was a great
duellist--that was the age of duels. Shot a man the first year he came
back from France, didn't he?"
"A sad scamp, but a good husband," remarked the doctor, ignoring the
incident of the duel. "I remember when his first child was born, he was
on his knees praying the whole time, and then when it was over he went
out and got as drunk as a lord. 'Where's Bushrod?' were the first words
his wife spoke, and when some fool answered her, 'Bushrod's drunk,
Bessy,' she replied, like an angel, 'Poor fellow, I know he needs it.'
They were a most devoted couple, I always heard. Who was she, George?
It's gone out of my mind. Was she Bessy Randolph?"
"No, Bessy Randolph was his first flame, and when she threw him over for
Ned Peyton, he married Bessy Tucker. They used to say that when he
couldn't get one Bessy, he took the other. Yes, he made a devoted
husband, never a wild oat to sow after his marriage. I remember when I
called on him once, when he was living in that big house there on top of
the hill--"
"I think you're wrong about that, George. I am sure it was Robert who
lived there. When I attended him in his last illness--"
"I reckon I know where Bushrod Carrington lived, Theophilus. I've been
there often enough. The house you're talking about is over on the other
side of the hill, and was built by Robert."
"Well, I'm perfectly positive, George, that when I attended Robert in
his last illness--"
"His last illness be hanged! I tell you what, Theophilus, you're getting
entirely too opinionated for a man of your years. If it grows on you,
you'll be having an attack of apoplexy next. Have you got a glass of
iced water you can give Theophilus, Sally?"
"I'll get it," said young George, as Sally rose, and when he had gone
out in response to her nod, the General, cooling a little, glanced with
a sly wink from Sally to me. "You put me in mind of Bushrod's first
flame, Bessy Randolph, my dear," he observed; "she was a great belle and
beauty and half the men in Virginia proposed to her, they used to say,
before she married Ned Peyton. 'No, I can't accept you for a husband,'
the minx would reply, 'but I think you will do very well indeed as a
hanger-on.' It looks as if you'd got George for a hanger-on, eh?"
"At present she's got him in place of a boy-of-all-jobs," I observed
rightly, though a fierce misery worked in my mind.
"Well, she can't do better," said the doctor, as they prepared to leave.
"Let me hear how you are, Ben. Don't eat too much till you get back your
strength, and be sure to take your egg-nog three times a day. Come
along, George, and we'll look up Robert's and Bushrod's graves in the
churchyard. You'd better bring the palm-leaf fan, you'll probably need
it."
They descended the curving steps leisurely, the General clinging to the
railing on one side, and supported by George on the other. Then, at
last, after many protestations of sympathy, and not a few anecdotes
forgotten until the instant of departure revived the memory, the old
grey horse, deciding suddenly that it was time for oats and the cool
stable, started of his own accord up the street toward the churchyard.
As the buggy passed out of sight, with the palm-leaf fan waving
frantically when it turned the corner, George came up the steps again,
and going indoors, brought out the little bundle of lace that he was to
deliver to its owner on his way home.
"Keep up your pluck, Ben," he said cheerfully; and turning away, he
looked at Sally with a long, thoughtful gaze as he held out his hand.
"Now, I'm going to wallop that boy," he remarked, after a minute. "Is
there anything else? I'll be over to-morrow as soon as I can get off
from the office."
"Nothing else," she replied; then, as he was moving away, she leaned
forward, with that bloom and softness in her look which always came to
her in moments when she was deeply stirred. "George!" she called, in a
low voice, "George!"
He stopped and came back, meeting her vivid face with eyes that grew
suddenly dark and gentle.
"It's just to say that I don't know what in the world I should have done
without you," she said.
Again he turned from her, and this time he went quickly, without looking
back, along the dusty street in the direction of the car line beyond the
corner.
"You've been up too long, Ben, and you're as white as a sheet," said
Sally, putting her hand on my arm. "Come, now, and lie down again while
Aunt Euphronasia is cooking supper. I must iron Maggie Tyler's blouse as
soon as it is dry."
The mention of Maggie Tyler's blouse was all I needed to precipitate me
into the abyss above which I had stood. Too miserable to offer useless
comment upon so obvious a tragedy, I followed her in silence back to the
bedroom, where she placed me on the bed and flung a soft, thin coverlet
over my prostrate body. She was still standing beside me, when Aunt
Euphronasia hobbled excitedly into the room, and looking across the
threshold, I discerned a tall, slender figure, shrouded heavily in
black, hovering in the dim hall beyond.
"Hi! hi! honey, hyer's Miss Mitty done come ter see you!" exclaimed Aunt
Euphronasia, in a burst of ecstasy.
Sally turned with a cry, and the next instant she was clasped in Miss
Mitty's arms, with her head hidden in the rustling crape on the old
lady's shoulder.
"I've just heard that you were in trouble, and that your husband was
ill," said Miss Mitty, when she had seated herself in the chair by the
window; "I came over at once, though I hadn't left the house for a year
except to go out to Hollywood."
"It was so good of you, Aunt Mitty, so good of you," replied Sally,
caressing her hand.
"If I'd only known sooner, I should have come. You are looking very
badly, my child."
"Ben will be well quickly now, and then I can rest."
At this she turned toward me, and enquired in a gentle, reserved way
about my illness, the nature of the fever, and the pain from which I had
suffered.
"I hope you had the proper food, Ben," she said, calling me for the
first time by my name; "I am sorry that I could not supply you with my
chicken jelly. Dr. Theophilus tells me he considers it superior to any
he has ever tried.--even to Mrs. Clay's."
"Comfort Sally, Miss Mitty, and it will do me more good than chicken
jelly."
For a minute she sat looking at me kindly in silence. Then, as little
Benjamin was brought, she took him upon her lap, and remarked that he
was a beautiful baby, and that she already discerned in him the look of
her Uncle Theodoric Fairfax.
"I should like you to come to my house as soon as you are able to move,"
she said presently, as she rose to go, and paused for a minute to bend
over and kiss little Benjamin. "You will be more comfortable there,
though the air is, perhaps, fresher over here."
I thanked her with tears in my eyes, and a resolve in my mind that at
least Sally and the baby should accept the offer.
"There is a basket of old port in the sitting-room; I thought it might
help to strengthen you," were her last words as she passed out, with
Sally clinging to her arm, and the crape veil she still wore for Miss
Matoaca rustling as she moved.
"Po' Miss Mitty has done breck so I 'ouldn't hev knowed her f'om de
daid," observed Aunt Euphronasia, when the front door had closed and the
sound of rapidly rolling wheels had passed down the street.
All night Sally and I talked of her, she resisting and I entreating that
she should go to her old home for the rest of the summer.
"How can I leave you, Ben? How can you possibly do without me?"
"Don't bother about me. I'll manage to scrape along, somehow. There are
two things that are killing me, Sally--the fact of owing money that I
can't pay, and the thought of your toiling like a slave over my
comfort."
"I'll go, then, if you will come with me."
"You know I can't come with you. She only asked me, you must realise,
out of pity."
"Well, I shan't go a step without you," she said decisively at last,
"for I don't see how on earth you would live through the summer if I
did."
"I don't see either," I admitted honestly, looking at her, as she stood
in the frame of the long window, the ruffles of her muslin dressing-gown
blowing gently in the breeze which had sprung up in the garden. Beyond
her there was a pale dimness, and the fresh, moist smell of the dew on
the grass.
What she had said was the truth. How could I have lived through the
summer if she had left me? Since the night after my failure, when we had
come, for the first time, face to face with each other, I had leaned on
her with all the weight of my crippled strength; and this weight,
instead of crushing her to the earth, appeared to add vigour and
buoyancy to her slender figure. Long afterwards, when my knowledge of
her had come at last, not through love, but through bitterness, I
wondered why I had not understood on that night, while I lay there
watching her pale outline framed by the window. Love, not meat and
drink, was her nourishment, and without love, though I were to surround
her with all the fruits of the earth, she would still be famished. That
she was strong, I had already learned. What I was still to discover was
that this strength lay less in character than in emotion. Her very
endurance--her power of sustained sympathy, of sacrifice--had its birth
in some strangely idealised quality of passion--as though even suffering
or duty was enkindled by this warm, clear flame that burned always
within her.
As the light broke, we were awakened, after a few hours' restless sleep,
by a sharp ring at the bell; and when she had slipped into her wrapper
and answered it, she came back very slowly, holding an open note in her
hands.
"Oh, poor Aunt Mitty, poor Aunt Mitty. She died all alone in her house
last night, and the servants found her this morning."
"Well, the last thing she did was a kindness," I said gently.
"I'm glad of that, glad she came to see me, but, Ben, I can't help
believing that it killed her. She had Aunt Matoaca's heart trouble, and
the strain was too much." Then, as I held out my arms, she clung to me,
weeping. "Never leave me alone, Ben--whatever happens, never, never
leave me alone!"
* * * * *
A few days later, when Miss Mitty's will was opened, it was found that
she had left to Sally her little savings of the last few years, which
amounted to ten thousand dollars. The house, with her income, passed
from her to the hospital endowed by Edmond Bland in a fit of rage with
his youngest daughter; and the old lady's canary and the cheque, which
fluttered some weeks later from the lawyer's letter, were the only
possessions of hers that reached her niece.
"She left the miniature of me painted when I was a child to George,"
said Sally, with the cheque in her hand; "George was very good to her at
the end. Did you ever notice my miniature, framed in pearls, that she
wore sometimes, in place of grandmama's, at her throat?"
I had not noticed it, and the fact that I had never seen it, and was
perfectly unaware whether or not it resembled Sally, seemed in some
curious way to increase, rather than to diminish, the jealous pain at my
heart. Why should George have been given this trifle, which was
associated with Sally, and which I had never seen?
She leaned forward and the cheque fluttered into my plate.
"Take the money, Ben, and do what you think best with it," she added.
"It belongs to you. Wouldn't you rather keep it in bank as a nest-egg?"
"No, take it. I had everything of yours as long as you had anything."
"Then it goes into bank for you all the same," I replied, as I slipped
the paper into my pocket.
An hour later, as I passed in the car down the long hill, I told myself
that I would place the money to Sally's account, in order that she might
draw on it until I had made good the strain of my illness. My first
intention had been to go into the bank on my way to the office; but
glancing at my watch as I left the car, I found that it was already
after nine o'clock, and so returning the cheque to my pocket, I crossed
the street, where I found the devil of temptation awaiting me in the
person of Sam Brackett.
"I say, Ben, if you had a little cash, here's an opportunity to make
your fortune rise," he remarked; "I've just given George a tip and he's
going in."
"You'd better keep out of it, Ben," said George, wheeling round suddenly
after he had nodded and turned away. "It's copper, and you know if
there's a thing on earth that can begin to monkey when you don't expect
it to, it's the copper trade."
"Bonanza copper mining stock is selling at zero again," commented Sam
imperturbably, "and if it doesn't go up like a shot, then I'm a deader."
Whether his future was to be that of a deader or not concerned me
little; but while I stood there on the crowded pavement, with my eyes on
the sky, I had a sudden sensation, as if the burden of debt--which was
the burden, not of thought, but of metal--had been removed from my
shoulders. My first fortune had been made in copper,--why not repeat it?
That one minute's sense of release, of freedom, had gone like wine to my
head. I saw stretching away from me the dull years I must spend in
chains, but I saw, also, in the blessed vision which Sam Brackett had
called up, the single means of escape.
"What does the General think of it, George?" I enquired.
"He's putting in money, I believe, moderately as usual," replied George,
with a worried look on his face; "but I tell you frankly, Ben, whether
it's a good thing or not, if that's Miss Mitty's legacy, you oughtn't to
speculate with it. Sally might need it."
"Sally needs a thousand times more," I returned, not without irritation,
"and I shall get it for her in the way I can." Then I held out my hand.
"You're a first-rate chap, George," I added, "but just think what it
would mean to Sally if I could get out of debt at a jump."
"I dare say," he responded, "but I'm not sure that putting your last ten
thousand dollars in the Bonanza copper mining stock is a rational way of
doing it."
"Such things aren't done in a rational way. The secret of successful
speculating is to be willing to dare everything for something. Sam's got
faith in the Bonanza, and he knows a hundred times as much about it as
you or I."
"If it doesn't rise," said Sam emphatically, "then I'm a deader."
I still saw the dull years stretching ahead, and I still felt the
tangible weight on my shoulders of the two hundred thousand dollars I
owed. The old prostrate instinct of the speculator, which is but the
gambler's instinct in better clothes, lifted its head within me.
"Well, it won't do any harm to go into Townley's and find out about it,"
I said, moving in the direction of the broker's office next door.
CHAPTER XXX
IN WHICH SALLY PLANS
My first sensation after putting Sally's ten thousand dollars into
copper mining stock was one of immense relief, almost of exhilaration,
as if I already heard in my fancy the clanking of the loosened chains as
they dropped from me. I recalled, one by one, the incidents of my
earliest "risky" and yet fortunate venture, when, following the
General's advice, I had gone in boldly, and after a short period of
breathless fluctuation, had "realised," as he had said, "a nice little
fortune for a first hatching." And because this seemed to me the single
means of recovery, because I had so often before in my life been guided
by some infallible instinct to seize the last chance that in the outcome
had proved to be the right way, I felt now that reliance upon fortune,
that assurance of the thing hoped for, which was as much a portion of
experience as it was a quality of temperament.
At home, when I reached there late in the afternoon, I found Sally just
stepping out of the General's buggy, while the great man, sacrificing
gallantry to the claims of gout, sat, under his old-fashioned linen dust
robe, holding the slackened reins over the grey horse.
"We've got a beautiful plan, Ben, the General and I," remarked Sally,
when he had driven away, and we were entering the house; "but it's a
secret, and you're not to know of it until it is ready to be divulged."
"Is George aware of it?" I asked irrelevantly, moved by I know not what
spirit of averseness.
"Yes, we've let George into it, but I'm not perfectly sure that he
approves. The idea came to the General and to me almost at the same
instant, and that is a very good thing to be said of any idea. It proves
it to be an elastic one anyway."
She talked merrily through supper, breaking into smiles from time to
time, caressing evidently this idea, which was so elastic, and which she
declined provokingly to divulge. But I, also, had my secret, for my
mind, responding to the springs of hope, toyed ceaselessly with the
possibility of escape. For several weeks this dream of ultimate freedom
possessed my thoughts, and then, at last, when the copper trade, instead
of reviving, seemed paralysed for a season, I awakened with a shock, to
the knowledge that I had lost Sally's little fortune as irretrievably as
I appeared to have lost my larger one. Clearly my financial genius was
asleep, or off assisting at a sacrifice; and it did little good, as I
toiled home in the afternoon, to curse myself frantically for a perverse
and a thankless brute. It was too late now; I had played the fool once
too often and the money was gone. Was my brain weakened permanently by
the fever, I wondered? Had the muscles of my will dwindled away and
grown flabby, like the muscles of my body?
As I left the car, a group of school children ran along the pavement in
front of me, and then scattering like pigeons, fluttered after a big,
old-fashioned barouche that had turned the corner. When it came nearer,
I saw that the barouche was the General's, a piece of family property
which had descended to him from his father, and that the great man now
sat on the deep, broadcloth-covered cushions, his legs very far apart,
his hands clasped on his gold-headed walking-stick, and his square,
mottled face staring straight ahead, with that look of tenacity, as if
he were saying somewhere back in his brain, "I'll hang on to the death."
Before our door, where Sally was waiting in her hat and veil, the
barouche drew up with a flourish; Balaam, the old negro coachman,
settled himself for a doze on the box, and the pair of fat roans began
switching their long tails in the faces of the swarming school children.
"So you're just in time, Ben," remarked the General, while he hobbled
out in order to help Sally in. "I thought you'd have been at home at
least an hour ago. Meant to come earlier, but something went wrong at
the stables. Something always is wrong at the stables. I wouldn't be in
George's shoes for a mint of money. Never a day passes that he isn't
fussing about his horses, or his traps, or his groom. Well, you're
ready, Sally? I like a woman who is punctual, and I never in my life
knew but one who was. That was your Aunt Matoaca. You get it from her, I
suppose. Ah, _she_ never kept you waiting a minute,--no fussing about
gloves or fans or handkerchiefs. Always just ready when you came for
her, and looking like an angel. Never saw her in a rose-lined bonnet,
did you, my dear?"
"Only in black, General," replied Sally, as she took her seat in the
barouche. "Come, get in, Ben, we're going to reveal our secret at last,
and we want you to be with us."
The General got in again with difficulty, groaning a little; I entered
and sat down opposite to them, with my back to the horses; and the old
negro coachman, disappointed at the length of the wait, pulled the reins
gently and gave a slight, admonishing flick at the broad flanks of the
roans. Behind the barouche the school children still fluttered, and
turning in his seat, the General looked back angrily and threatened them
with a wave of his big ebony walking-stick.
"What is it, Sally?" I asked, striving to force a curiosity my
wretchedness prevented me from feeling; "can't you unfold the mystery?"
"Be patient, be patient," she responded gaily, leaning back beside the
General, as we rolled down the wide street under the wilted, dusty
leaves of the trees. "Haven't you noticed for weeks that the General and
I have had a secret?"
"Yes, I've noticed it, but I thought you'd tell me when the time came."
"We shan't tell him, shall we, General?--We'll show him."
"Ah, there's time enough, time enough," returned the General,
absent-mindedly, for he had not been listening. His resolute, bulldog
face, flushed now by the heat and covered with a fine perspiration, had
taken on an absorbed and pondering look. "I never come along here that
it doesn't put me back at least fifty years," he observed, leaning over
his side of the barouche, and peering down one of the side streets that
led past the churchyard. "Sorry they've been meddling with that old
church. Better have left it as it used to be in my boyhood. Do you see
that little house there, set back in the yard, with the chimney
crumbling to pieces? That was the first school I ever went to, and it
was taught by old Miss Deborah Timberlake, the sister of William
Timberlake who shot all those stags' heads you've got hanging in your
hall. Nobody ever knew why she taught school. Plenty to eat and drink.
William gave her everything that she wanted, but she got cranky when
she'd turned sixty, and insisted on being independent. Independent, she
said! Pish! Tush. Never learned a word from her. Taught us English
history, then Virginia history. As for the rest of America, she used to
say it didn't have a history, merely a past. Mentioned the Boston tea
party once by mistake, and had to explain that _that_ was an incident,
not history. Well, well, it seems a thousand years ago. Never could
understand, to save my life, why she took to teaching. Had all she
wanted. Her brother William was an odd man. A fine toast. I never heard
a better story--I remember them even as a boy--and often enough I've got
them off since his death. Used to ill-treat his slaves, though, they
said, and had queer ideas about women and property. Married his wife who
didn't have a red penny, and on his wedding journey, when she called him
by his name, replied to her, 'Madam, my dependants are accustomed to
address me as Mr. Timberlake.' Ha, ha! a queer bird was William."
The street was the one down which I had passed so many years ago, wedged
tightly between my mother and Mrs. Kidd, to the funeral of old Mr.
Cudlip; and it seemed to me that it held unchanged, as if it had
stagnated there between the quaint old houses, that same atmosphere of
sadness, of desolation. The houses, still half closed, appeared all but
deserted; the aged negresses, staring after us under their hollowed
palms, looked as if they had stood there forever. Progress, which had
invaded the neighbouring quarters, had left this one, as yet,
undisturbed.
Opposite to me, Sally smiled with beaming eyes when she met my gaze. I
knew that she was hugging her secret, and I knew, in some intuitive way,
that she expected this secret to afford me pleasure. The General,
peering from right to left in search of associations, kept moving his
lips as if he were thinking aloud. On his face, in the deep creases
where the perspiration had gathered, the dust, rising from the street,
had settled in greyish streaks. From time to time, in an absent-minded
manner, he got out his big white silk handkerchief and wiped it away.
"There now! I've got it! Hold on a minute, Balaam. That's the house that
Robert Carrington built clean over here on the other side of the hill.
There it is now--the one with that pink crape myrtle in the yard, and
the four columns, you can see it with your own eyes. Theophilus tried to
prove to me that Robert lived in Bushrod's house, and that he'd attended
him there in his last illness. Last illness, indeed! The truth is that
Theophilus isn't what he once was. Memory's going and he doesn't like to
own it. No use arguing with him--you can't argue with a man whose memory
is going--but there's Robert Carrington's house. You've seen it with
your own eyes. Drive on, Balaam."
Balaam drove on; and the carriage, leaving the city and the thinning
suburbs, passed rapidly into one of the country roads, white with dust,
which stretched between ragged borders of yarrow and pokeberry that were
white with dust also. The fields on either side, sometimes planted in
corn, oftener grown wild in broomsedge or life-everlasting, shimmered
under the heat, which was alive with the whirring of innumerable
insects. Here and there a negro cabin, built close to the road, stood
bare in a piece of burned-out clearing, or showed behind the thick
fanlike leaves of gourd vines, with the heads of sunflowers nodding
heavily beside the open doorways. Occasionally, in the first few miles,
a covered wagon crawled by us on its way to town, the driver leaning far
over the dusty horses, and singing out "Howdy!" in a friendly voice,--to
which the General invariably responded "Howdy," in the same tone, as he
touched the wide brim of his straw hat with his ebony stick.
"Hasn't got on the scent, has he?" he enquired presently of Sally, with
a sly wink in my direction. "Are you sure George hasn't let it out?
Never could keep a secret, could George. He's one of those close-mouthed
fellows that shuts a thing up so tight it explodes before he's aware of
it. He can't hide anything from me. I read him just as if he were a
book. It's as well, I reckon, as I told him the other day, that he isn't
still in love with your wife, Ben, or it would be written all over him
as plain as big print."
My eyes caught Sally's, and she blushed a clear, warm pink to the heavy
waves of her hair.
"Not that he'd ever be such a rascal as to keep up a fancy for a married
woman," pursued the great man, unseeing and unthinking. "The
Bolingbrokes may have been wild, but they've always been men of honour,
and even if they've played fast and loose now and then with a woman,
they have never tried to pilfer anything that belonged to another man."
"I think we're coming to it," said Sally suddenly, trying to turn the
conversation to lighter matters.
"Ah, so we are, so we are. That's a good view of the river, and there's
the railroad station at the foot of the hill not a half mile away. It's
the very thing you need, Ben, it will be the making of you and of the
youngster, as I said to Sally when the idea first entered my mind."
The barouche made a quick turn into a straight lane bordered by old
locust trees, and stopped a few minutes later before a square red brick
country house, with four white columns supporting the portico, and a
bower of ancient ivy growing over the roof.
"Here we are at last! Oh, Ben, don't you like it?" said Sally, springing
to the ground before the horses had stopped.
"Like it? Of course he likes it," returned the General, impatiently, as
he got out and followed her between the rows of calycanthus bushes that
edged the walk. "What business has he got not to like it after all the
trouble we've been to on his account? It's the very thing for his
health--that's what I said to you, my dear, as soon as I heard of Miss
Mitty's legacy. 'The old Bending place is for sale and will go cheap,' I
said. 'Why not move out into the country and give Ben and the youngster
a chance to breathe fresh air? He's beginning to look seedy and fresh
air will set him up.'"
"But I really don't believe he likes it," rejoined Sally, a little
wistfully, turning, as she reached the columns of the portico, and
looking doubtfully into my face.
"You know I like anything that you like, Sally," I answered in a voice
which, I knew, sounded flat and unenthusiastic, in spite of my effort;
"it's a fine house and there's a good view of the river, I dare say, at
the back."
"I thought it would please you, Ben. It seemed to the General and me the
very best thing we could do with Aunt Mitty's money."
There was a hurt look in her eyes; her mouth trembled as she spoke, and
all the charming mystery had fled from her manner. If we had been alone
I should have opened my arms to her, and have made my confession with
her head on my shoulder; but the square, excited figure of the General,
who kept marching aimlessly up and down between the calycanthus bushes,
put the restraint of a terrible embarrassment upon my words. Tell her I
must, and yet how could I tell her while the little cynical bloodshot
eyes of the great man were upon us?
"Let's go to the back. We can see the river from the terrace," she said,
and there was a touching disappointment in her smile and her voice.
"Yes, we'll go to the back," responded the General, with eagerness.
"Follow this path, Ben, the one that leads round the west wing," and he
added when we had turned the corner of the house, and stopped on the
trim terrace, covered with beds of sweet-william and foxglove, "What do
you think of that for a view now? If those big poplars were out of the
way, you could see clear down to Merrivale, the old Smith place, where I
used to go as a boy."
Meeting the disappointment in Sally's look, I tried to rise valiantly to
the occasion; but it was evident, even while I uttered my empty phrases,
that to all of us, except the General, the mystery had been blighted by
some deadly chill in the very instant of its unfolding. The great man
alone, with that power of ignoring the obvious, which had contributed so
largely to his success, continued his running comments in his cheerful,
dogmatic tone. Some twenty minutes later, when, after an indifferent
inspection of the house on our part, and a vigilant one on the
General's, we rolled back again in the barouche over the dusty road, he
was still perfectly unaware that the surprise he had sprung had not been
attended by a triumph of pleasure for us all.
"You're foolish, my dear, about those big poplars," he said a dozen
times, while he sat staring, with an unseeing gaze, at the thin red line
of the sunset over the corn-fields. "They ought to come down, and then
you could see clean to the old Smith place, where I used to go as a boy.
I learned to shoot there. Fell in love, too, when I wasn't more than
twelve with Miss Lucy Smith, my first flame--pretty as a pink, all the
boys were in love with her."
Sally's hand stole into mine under the muslin ruffles of her dress, and
her eyes, when she looked at me, held a soft, deprecating expression, as
if she were trying to understand, and could not, how she had hurt me.
When at last we came to our own door and the General, after insisting
again that the only improvement needed to the place was that the big
poplars should come down, had driven serenely away in his big barouche,
we ascended the steps in silence, and entered the sitting-room, which
was filled with the pale gloom of twilight. While I lighted the lamp,
she waited in the centre of the room, with the soft, deprecating
expression still in her eyes.
"What is it, Ben?" she asked, facing the lamp as I turned; "did you mind
my keeping the idea a secret? Why, I thought that would please you."
"It isn't that, Sally, it isn't that,--but--I've lost the money."
"Lost it, Ben?"
"I saw what I thought was a good chance to speculate--and I speculated."
"You speculated with the ten thousand dollars?"
"Yes."
"And lost it?"
"Yes."
For a moment her face was inscrutable.
"When did it happen?"
"I found out to-day that it was gone beyond hope of recovery."
"Then you haven't known it all along and kept it from me?"
"I was going to tell you as soon as I came up this afternoon, but the
General was here."
"I am glad of that," she said quietly. "If you had kept anything from me
and worried over it, it would have broken my heart."
"Sally, I have been a fool."
"Yes, dear."
"Heaven knows, I don't mean to add to your troubles, but when I think of
all that I've brought you to, I feel as if I should go out of my mind."
She put her hand on my arm, smiling up at me with her old sparkling
gaiety. "Come and sit down by me, and we'll have a cup of tea, and
you'll feel better. But first I must tell you that I am a terribly
extravagant person, Ben, for I paid another dollar and a quarter for a
pound of tea this morning."
"Thank heaven for it," I returned devoutly.
"And there's something else. I feel my sins growing on me. Do you
remember last winter, when you were worrying so over your losses, and
didn't know where you could turn for cash--do you remember that I paid
five thousand dollars--five thousand dollars, you understand, and that's
half of ten--for a lace gown?"
"Did you, darling?"
"Do you remember what you said?"
"'Thank you for the privilege of paying for it,' I hope."
"You paid the bill, and never told me I oughtn't to have bought it. What
you said was, 'I'm awfully glad you've got such a becoming dress,
because business is going badly, and we may have to pull up for a
while.' Then I found out from George that you'd sold your motor car, and
everything else you could lay hands on to meet the daily expenses. Now,
Ben, tell me honestly which is the worse sinner, you or I?"
"But that was my fault, too--everything was my fault."
"The idea of your committing the extravagance of a lace gown! Why, you
couldn't even tell the difference between imitation and real. And that
pound of tea! You know you'd never have gone out and spent your last
dollar and a quarter on a pound of tea."
"If you'd wanted it, Sally."
"Well, you speculated with that ten thousand dollars from exactly the
same motive--because you thought I wanted so much that I didn't have.
But I bought that gown entirely to gratify my vanity--so you see, after
all, I'm a great deal the worse sinner of us two. There, now, I must see
about the baby. He was very fretful all the morning, and the doctor says
it is the heat. I'm sure, Ben, that he ought to get out of the city. How
can we manage it?"
"I'll manage it, dear. The General will be only too glad to lend the
money. I'll go straight over and explain matters to him."
A cry came from little Benjamin in the nursery, and kissing me hurriedly
with, "Remember, I'm a sinner, Ben," she left the room, while I took up
my hat again, and went up-town to make my confession to the General and
request his assistance.
"Lend it to you, you scamp!" he exclaimed, when I found him on his front
porch with a palm-leaf fan in his hand. "Of course, I'll lend it to you;
but why in the deuce were you so blamed cheerful this afternoon about
that house in the country? I could have sworn you were in a gale over
the idea. Here, Hatty, bring me a pen. I can see perfectly well by this
damned electric light they've stuck at my door. Well, I'm sorry enough,
for you, Ben. It's hard on your wife, and she's the kind of woman that
makes a man believe in the angels. Her Aunt Matoaca all over--you know,
George, I always told you that Sally Mickleborough was the image of her
Aunt Matoaca."
"I know you did," replied George, twirling the end of his mustache. He
looked tired and anxious, and it seemed to me suddenly that the whole
city, and every face in it, under the white blaze of the electric light,
had this same tired and anxious expression.
I took the cheque, put it into my pocket with a word of thanks, and
turned to the steps.
"I can't stay, General, while the baby is ill. Sally may need me."
"Well, you're right, Ben, stick to her when she needs you, and you'll
find she'll stick to you. I've always said that gratitude counted
stronger in the sex than love."
As I went down the steps George joined me, and walked with me to the car
line. The look on his face brought to my memory the night I had seen him
staring moodily across the roses and lilies at Sally's bare shoulders,
and the same fierce instinct of possession gnawed in my heart.
"Look here, Ben, I can't bear to think of the way things are going with
Sally," he said.
"I can't bear to think of it myself," I returned gloomily.
"If there's ever anything I can do--remember I am at your service."
"I'll remember it, George," I answered, angry with myself because my
gratitude was shot through with a less noble feeling. "I'll remember it,
and I thank you, too."
"Then it's a bargain. You won't let her suffer because you're too proud
to take help?"
"No, I won't let her suffer if I have to beg to prevent it. Haven't I
just done so?"
He held out his hand, I wrung it in mine, and then, as I got on the car,
he turned away and walked at his lazy step back along the block. Looking
from the car window, as it passed on, I saw his slim, straight figure
moving, with bent head, as if plunged in thought, under the electric
light at the corner.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE DEEPEST SHADOW
As I entered the house, the sound of Aunt Euphronasia's crooning fell on
my ears, and going into the nursery, I found Sally sitting by the
window, with the child on her knees, while the old negress waved a
palm-leaf fan back and forth with a slow, rhythmic movement. A
night-lamp burned, with lowered wick, on the bureau, and as Sally looked
up at me, I saw that her face had grown wan and haggard since I had left
her.
"The baby was taken very ill just after you went," she said; "we feared
a convulsion, and I sent one of the neighbours' children for the doctor.
It may be only the heat, he says, but he is coming again at midnight."
"I had hoped you would be able to get off in the morning."
"No, not now. The baby is too ill. In a few days, perhaps, if he is
better."
Her voice broke, and kneeling beside her, I clasped them both in my
arms, while the anguish in my heart rose suddenly like a wild beast to
my throat.
"What can I do, Sally?" I asked passionately. "What can I do?"
"Nothing, dear, nothing. Only be quiet."
Only be quiet! Rising to my feet I walked softly to the end of the room,
and then turning came back again to the spot where I had knelt. At the
moment I longed to knock down something, to strangle something, to pull
to earth and destroy as a beast destroys in a rage. Through the open
window I could see a full moon shining over a magnolia, and the very
softness and quiet of the moonlight appeared, in some strange way, to
increase my suffering. A faint breeze, scented with jessamine, blew
every now and then from the garden, rising, dying away, and rising
again, until it waved the loosened tendrils of hair on Sally's neck. The
odour, also, like the moonlight, mingled, while I stood there, and was
made one with the anguish in my thoughts. Again I walked the length of
the room, and again I turned and came back to the window beside which
Sally sat. My foot as I moved stumbled upon something soft and round,
and stooping to pick it up, I saw that it was a rubber doll, dropped by
little Benjamin when he had grown too ill or too tired to play. I laid
it in Sally's work-basket on the table, and then throwing off my coat,
flung myself into a chair in one corner. A minute afterwards I rose, and
walking gently through the long window, looked on the garden, which lay
dim and fragrant under the moonlight. On the porch, twining in and out
of the columns, the star jessamine, riotous with its second blooming,
swayed back and forth like a curtain; and as I bent over, the small,
white, deadly sweet blossoms caressed my face. A white moth whirred by
me into the room, and when I entered again, I saw that it was flying
swiftly in circles, above the flame of the night-lamp on the bureau.
Sally was sitting just as I had left her, her arm under the child's
head, her face bent forward as if listening to a distant, almost
inaudible sound. She appeared so still, so patient, that I wondered in
amazement if she had sat there for hours, unchanged, unheeding,
unapproachable? There was in her attitude, in her pensive quiet,
something so detached and tragic, that I felt suddenly that I had never
really seen her until that minute; and instead of going to her as I had
intended, I drew away, and stood on the threshold watching her almost as
a stranger might have done. Once the child stirred and cried, lifting
his little hands and letting them fall again with the same short cry of
distress. The flesh of my heart seemed to tear suddenly asunder, and I
sprang forward. Sally looked up at me, shook her head with a slow, quiet
movement, and I stopped short as if rooted there by the single step I
had taken. After ten years I remember every detail, every glimmer of
light, every fitful rise and fall of the breeze, as if, not visual
objects only, but scents, sounds, and movements, were photographed
indelibly on my brain. I know that the white moth fluttered about my
head, and that raising my hand, I caught it in my palm, which closed
over it with violence. Then the cry from little Benjamin came again, and
opening my palm, I watched the white moth fall dead, with crushed wings,
to the floor. When I forget all else in my life, I shall still see Sally
sitting motionless, like a painted figure, in the faint, reddish glow of
the night-lamp, while above her, and above the little waxen face on her
knee, the shadow, of the palm-leaf fan, waved by Aunt Euphronasia,
flitted to and fro like the wing of a bat.
At midnight the doctor came, and when he left, I followed him to the
front steps.
"I'll come again at dawn," he said, "and in the meantime look out for
your wife. She's been strained to the point of breaking."
"You think, then, that the child is--is hopeless?"
"Not hopeless, but very serious. I'll be back in a few hours. If there's
a change, send for me, and remember, as I said, look out for your wife."
I went indoors, found some port wine left in Miss Mitty's bottles,
poured out a glass, and carried it to her.
"Drink this, darling," I said.
As I held it to her lips, she swallowed it obediently, and then, looking
up, she thanked me with her unfailing smile.
"Oh, we'll drink outer de healin' fountain, by en bye, lil'
chillun,"
crooned Aunt Euphronasia softly, and the tune has rung ever afterwards
somewhere in my brain. To escape from it at the time, I went out upon
the front steps, closed the door, and walked, restless as a caged tiger,
up and down the deserted pavement. A homeless dog or two, panting from
thirst, lay in the gutter; otherwise there was not a sound, not a living
thing, from end to end of the long dusty street.
For two hours I walked up and down there, entering the house from time
to time to see if Sally needed me, or if she had moved. Then, as the
light broke feebly, the doctor came, and we went in together. Sally was
still sitting there, as she had sat all night, rigid in the dim glow of
the lamp, and over her Aunt Euphronasia still waved the palm-leaf fan
with its black, flitting shadow. Then, as we crossed the threshold,
there was a sudden sharp cry, and when I sprang forward and caught them
both in my arms, I found that Sally had fainted and the child was dead
on her knees.
* * * * *
We buried the child in the old Bland section at Hollywood, where a
single twisted yew-tree grew between the graves, obliterated by ivy, of
Edmond Bland and his wife, Caroline Matilda, born Fairfax. On the way
home Sally sat rigid and tearless, with her hand in mine, and her eyes
fixed on the drawn blinds of the carriage, as though she were staring
intently through the closed window at something that fascinated and held
her gaze in the dusty street.
"Does your head ache, darling?" I asked once, and she made a quick,
half-impatient gesture of denial, with that strained, rapt look, as if
she were seeing a vision, still in her face. Only when we reached home,
and Aunt Euphronasia met her with outstretched arms on the threshold,
did this agonised composure break down in passionate weeping on the old
negress's shoulder.
The strength which had upheld her so long seemed suddenly to have
departed, and all night she wept on my breast, while I fanned her in the
hot air, which had grown humid and close. Not until the dawn had broken
did my arm drop powerless with sleep, and the fan fell on the pillow.
Then I slept for an hour, worn out with grief and exhaustion, and when
presently I awoke with a start, I saw that she had left my side, and
that her muslin dressing-gown was missing from the chintz-covered chair
where it had lain. When I called her in alarm, she came through the
doorway that led to the kitchen, freshly dressed, with a coffeepot in
her hand.
"For God's sake, Sally," I implored, "don't make coffee for me!"
"I've made it, dear," she answered. "I couldn't let you go out without a
mouthful to eat. You did not sleep a wink."
"And you?" I demanded.
"I didn't sleep either, but then I can rest all day." Her lip trembled
and she pressed her teeth into it. "By the time you are dressed, Ben,
breakfast will be ready."
Her eyes were red and swollen, her mouth pale and tremulous, all her
radiant energy seemed beaten out of her; yet she spoke almost
cheerfully, and there was none of the slovenliness of sorrow in her
fresh and charming appearance. I dressed quickly, and going into the
sitting-room, drank the coffee she had made because I knew it would
please her. When it was time for me to start, she went with me to the
door, and turning midway of the block, I saw her standing on the steps,
smiling after me, with the sun in her eyes, like the ghost of herself as
she had stood and smiled the morning after my failure. In the evening I
found her paler, thinner, more than ever like the wan shadow of herself,
yet meeting me with the same brave cheerfulness with which she had sent
me forth. Could I ever repay her? I asked myself passionately, could I
ever forget?
The dreary summer weeks dragged by like an eternity; the autumn came and
passed, and at the first of the year I was sent down, with a salary of
ten thousand dollars, to build up traffic on the Tennessee and Carolina
Railroad, which the Great South Midland and Atlantic had absorbed. Sally
went with me, but she was so languid and ill that the change, instead of
invigorating her, appeared to exhaust her remaining vitality. She lived
only when I was with her, and when I came in unexpectedly, as I did
sometimes, I would find her lying so still and cold on the couch that I
would gather her to me in a passion of fear lest she should elude the
lighter grasp with which I had held her. Never, not even in her
girlhood, had I loved her with the intensity, the violence, of those
months when I hardly dared clasp her to me in my terror that she might
dissolve and vanish from my embrace. Then, at last, when the spring
came, and the woods were filled with flowering dogwood and red-bud, she
seemed to revive a little, to bloom softly again, like a flower that
opens the sweeter and fresher after the storm.
"Is it the mild air, or the spring flowers?" I asked one afternoon, as
we drove through the Southern woods, along a narrow deserted road that
smelt of the budding pines.
"Neither, Ben, it is you," she replied. "I have had you all these
months. Without that I could not have lived."
"You have had me," I answered, "ever since the first minute I saw your
face. You have had me always."
"Not always. During those years of your great success I thought I had
lost you."
"How could you, Sally, when it was all for you, and you knew it?"
"It may have been for me in the beginning, but success, when it came,
crowded me out. It left me no room. That's why I didn't really mind the
failure, dear, and the poverty--that's why I don't now really mind this
burden of debt. Success took you away from me, failure brings you the
closer. And when you go from me, Ben, there's something in me, I don't
know what--something, like Aunt Matoaca in my blood--that rises up and
rebels. If things had gone on like that, if you hadn't come back, I
should have grown hard and indifferent. I should have found some other
interest."
"Some other interest?" I repeated, while my heart throbbed as if a spasm
of memory contracted it.
"Oh, of course, I don't know now just what I mean--but when I look back,
I realise that I couldn't have stood many years like that with nothing
to fill them. I'd have done something desperate, if it was only going
over gates after Bonny. There's one thing they taught me, though, Ben,"
she added, "and that is that poor Aunt Matoaca was right."
"Right in what, Sally?"
"Right in believing that women must have larger lives--that they mustn't
be expected to feed always upon their hearts. You tell them to let love
fill their lives, and then when the lives are swept bare and clean of
everything else, in place of love you leave mere vacancy--just mere
vacancy and nothing but that. How can they fill their lives with love
when love isn't there--when it's off in the stock market or the
railroad, or wherever its practical affairs may be?"
"But it comes back in the evening."
"Yes, it comes back in the evening and falls asleep over its cigar."
"Well, you've got me now," I responded cheerfully, "there's no doubt of
that, you've got me now."
"That's why I'm getting well. How delicious the pines are! and look at
the red-bud flowering there over the fence! It may be wicked of me, but,
do you know--I've never been really able to regret that you lost your
money."
"It is rather wicked, dear, to rejoice in my misery."
"I didn't say I 'rejoiced'--only that I couldn't regret. How can I
regret it when the money came so between us?"
"But it didn't, Sally, if you could only understand! I loved you just as
much all that time as I do now."
"But how was I to be sure, when you didn't want to be with me?"
"I did want to be with you--only there was always something else that
had to be done."
"And the something else came always before me. But my life, you see, was
swept bare and clean of everything except you."
"I had to work, Sally, I had to follow my ambition."
"You work now, but it is different. I don't mind this because it isn't
working with madness. Just as you felt that you wanted your ambition,
Ben, I felt that I wanted love. I was made so, I can't help it. Like
Aunt Matoaca, my life has been swept and garnished for that one guest,
and if it were ever to fail me, I'd--I'd go wild like Aunt Matoaca, I
suppose."
A red bird flew out of the pines across the road, and lifting her eyes,
she followed its flight with a look in which there was a curious
blending of sadness with passion. The truth of her words came home to
me, with a quiver of apprehension, while I looked at her face, and by
some curious freak of memory there flashed before me the image of George
Bolingbroke as he had bent over to lay the blossom of sweet alyssum
beside her plate. In all those months George, not I, had been there, I
remembered, and some fierce resentment, which was half jealousy, half
remorse, made me answer her almost with violence as my arm went about
her.
"But you had the big things always, and it is the big things that count
in the end."
"Yes, the big things count in the end. I used to tell myself that when
you forgot all the anniversaries. You remember them now."
"I have time to think now, then I hadn't." As I uttered the words I was
conscious of a sudden depression, of a poignant realisation of what this
"time to think" signified in my life. The smart of my failure was still
there, and I had known hours of late when my balked ambition was like a
wild thing crying for freedom within me. The old lust of power, the
passion for supremacy, still haunted my dreams, or came back to me at
moments like this, when I drove with Sally through the restless pines,
and smelt those vague, sweet scents of the spring, which stirred
something primitive and male in my heart. The fighter and the dreamer,
having fought out their racial battle to a finish, were now merged into
one.
We drove home slowly, the lights of the little Southern village shining
brightly through a cloudless atmosphere ahead--and the lights, like the
spring scents and the restless soughing of the pines, deepened the sense
of failure, of incompleteness, from which I suffered. My career showed
to me as suddenly cut off and broken, like a road the making of which
has stopped short halfway up a hill. Did she discern this restlessness
in me, I wondered, this ceaseless ache which resembled the ache of
muscles that have been long unused?
After this the months slipped quietly by, one placid week succeeding
another in a serene and cloudless monotony. Sally had few friends, there
were no women of her own social position in the place; yet she was never
lonely, never bored, never in search of distraction.
"I love it here, Ben," she said once, "it is so peaceful, just you and
I."
"You'd tire of it before long, and you'll be glad enough to go back to
Richmond when next spring comes."
At the time she did not protest, but when the following spring began to
unfold, and we prepared to return to Virginia in May, there was
something pensive and wistful in her parting from the little village and
from the people who had been kind to her in the year she had spent
there. We had taken several rooms in the house of Dr. Theophilus, who
was supported in his prodigality in roses only by the strenuous pickling
and preserving of Mrs. Clay; and as we drove, on a warm May afternoon,
up the familiar street from the station, I tried in vain to arouse in
her some of the interest, the animation, that she had lost.
"You'll be glad to see the doctor and Bonny and George," I said.
"Yes, I'll be glad to see the doctor and Bonny and George. There is the
house now, and look, the doctor is in his garden."
He had seen us before she spoke, for glancing up meditatively from
working a bed of bleeding hearts near the gate, his dim old eyes, over
their lowered spectacles, had been attracted to the approaching
carriage. Rising to his feet, he came rapidly to the pavement, his
trowel still in hand, his outstretched arms trembling with pleasure.
"Well, well, so here you are. It's good to see you. Tina, they have come
sooner than we expected them. Moses" (to a little negro, who appeared
from behind the currant bushes, where he had been digging), "take the
bags upstairs to the front rooms and tell your Miss Tina that they have
come sooner than we expected them."
As Moses darted off on his errand, in which he was assisted by the negro
coachman, Dr. Theophilus led us back into the garden, and placed Sally
in a low canvas chair, which he had brought from the porch to a shady
spot between a gorgeous giant of battle rose-bush and a bed of bleeding
hearts in full bloom.
"Come and sit down, my dear, come and sit down," he repeated, fussing
about her. "Tina will give you a cup of tea out here before you go to
your rooms, and Ben and I will take our juleps before supper. I've been
working in my garden, you see; there's nothing so satisfying in old age
as a taste for flowers. It's more absorbing than chess, as I tell
George--old George, I mean--and it's more soothing than children. Were
you far enough South, my dear, to see the yellow jessamine grow wild?
They tell me, too, that the Marshal Niel rose runs there up to the roofs
of the houses. With us it is a very delicate rose. I have never been
able to do anything with it,--but I have had a great success this year
with my bleeding hearts, you will notice. Ah, there's Tina! So you see,
Tina, here they are. They came sooner than we expected."
From the low white porch, under a bower of honeysuckle, Mrs. Clay
appeared, with a cup of tea and a silver basket of sponge snowballs
which she placed before Sally on a small green table; and immediately a
troop of slate-coloured pigeons fluttered from the mimosa tree and the
clipped yew at the end of the garden, and began pecking greedily in the
gravelled walk.
"I'm glad you've come, my dears," remarked the old lady in her brusque,
honest manner, "and I hope to heaven that you will be able to take
Theophilus's mind off his flowers. I declare he has grown so besotted
about them that I believe he'd sell the very clothes off his back to buy
a new variety of rose or lily. Only a week ago he took back a dozen
socks I had given him because he said he'd rather have the money to
spend in a strange kind of iris he'd just heard of."
"A most remarkable plant," observed the doctor, with enthusiasm, "the
peculiarity of which is that it is smaller and less attractive to the
vulgar eye than the common iris, of which I have a great number growing
at the end of the garden. Don't listen to Tina, my children, she's a
cynic, and no cynic can understand the philosophy of gardening. It was
one of the wisest of men, though a trifle unorthodox, I admit, who
advised us to cultivate our garden. A pessimist he may have been before
he took up the trowel, but a cynic--never."
"I am not complaining of the trowel, Theophilus," observed Mrs. Clay,
"though when it comes to that I don't see why a trowel and a bed of
roses is any more philosophic than a ladle and a kettle of pickles."
"Perhaps not, Tina, perhaps not," chuckled the doctor, "but yours is a
practical mind, and there's nothing, I've always said, like a practical
mind for seeing things crooked. It suits a crooked world, I suppose, and
that's why it usually manages to get on so well in it."
"And I'd like to know how you see things, Theophilus," sniffed Mrs.
Clay, whose temper was rising.
"I see them as they are, Tina, which isn't in the very least as they
appear," rejoined the good man, unruffled.
He bent forward, made a lunge with his trowel at a solitary blade of
grass growing in the bed of bleeding hearts, and after uprooting it,
returned with a tranquil face to his garden chair.
But Mrs. Clay, having, as he had said, a practical mind, merely sniffed
while she wiped off the small green table with a red-bordered napkin and
scattered the crumbs of sponge-cake to the greedy slate-coloured
pigeons.
"If I judged you by what you appear, Theophilus," she retorted,
crushingly, "I should have judged you for a fool on the day you were
born."
This sally, which was delivered with spirit, afforded the doctor an
evident relish.
"If you knew your Juvenal, my dear," he responded, with perfect good
humour, "you would remember: _Fronti nulla fides_."
Rising from his seat, he stooped fondly over the bed of bleeding hearts,
and gathering a few blossoms, presented them to Sally, with a courtly
bow.
"A favourite flower of mine. My poor mother was always very partial to
it," he remarked.
CHAPTER XXXII
I COME TO THE SURFACE
It was a bright June day, I remember, when I came to the surface again,
and saw clear sky for the first time for more than two years. I had
entered the office a little late, and the General had greeted me with an
outstretched hand in which I felt the grip of the bones through the
flabby flesh.
"Look here, Ben, have you kept control of the West Virginia and
Wyanoke?" he enquired, and I saw the pupils of his eyes contract to fine
points of steel, as they did when he meant business.
"Nobody wanted it, General. I still own control--or rather I still
practically own the road."
"Well, take my advice and don't sell to the first man that asks you,
even if he comes from the South Midland. I've just heard that they've
been tapping those undeveloped coal fields at Wyanoke, and I shouldn't
be surprised if they turned out, after all, to be the richest in West
Virginia."
It was then that I saw clear sky.
"I'll hold on, General, as long as you say," I replied. "Meanwhile, I'll
run out there and have a look."
"Oh, have a look by all means. I say, Ben," he added after a minute,
with a worried expression in his face, "have you heard about the trouble
that old fool Theophilus has been getting into? Mark my words, before he
dies, he'll land his sister in the poorhouse, as sure as I sit here.
Garden needed moisture, he said, couldn't raise some of those scraggy,
new-fangled things that nobody can pronounce the names of except
himself, so he went to work and had pipes laid from one end to the
other. When the bill came in there was no way to pay it except by
mortgaging his house, so he's gone and mortgaged it. Mrs. Clay, poor
lady, came to me on the point of tears--she'll be in the poorhouse yet,
I was obliged to tell her so--and entreated me to make an effort to
restrain Theophilus. 'I try to keep the catalogues from reaching him,'
she said, 'but sometimes the postman slips in without my seeing him, and
then he's sure to deliver one. Whenever Theophilus reads about any
strange specimen, or any hybridising nonsense that nobody heard of when
I was young, he seems to go completely out of his head, and the worst of
'em is,' she added," concluded the General, chuckling under his breath,
"'there isn't a single pretty, sweet-smelling flower in the lot.'"
"I'm awfully sorry about the house, General. Isn't there some way of
curbing him?"
"I never saw the bit yet that could curb an old fool," replied the great
man, indignantly; "the next thing his roof will be sold over his head,
and they'll go to the poorhouse, that's what I told Mrs. Clay. Poor
lady, she was really in a terrible state of mind."
"Surely you won't let it come to that. Wait till these dreamed-of coal
fields materialise and I'll take over that mortgage."
The General's lower lip shot out with a sulky and forbidding expression.
"The best thing that could happen to the old fool would be to have his
house sold above him, and by Jove, if he doesn't cease his extravagance,
I'll stand off and let them do it as sure as my name is George
Bolingbroke. What Theophilus needs," he concluded angrily, "is
discipline."
"It's too late to begin to discipline a man of over eighty."
"No, it ain't," retorted the General; "it's never too late. If it
doesn't do him any good in this world, it will be sure to benefit him in
the next. He's entirely too opinionated, that's the trouble with him. Do
you remember the way he sat up over there on Church Hill, and tried to
beat me down that Robert Carrington lived in Bushrod's house, and that
he'd attended him there in his last illness? As if I didn't know Bushrod
Carrington as well as my own brother. Got all his clothes in Paris. Can
see him now as he used to come to church in one of his waistcoats of
peaehblow brocade. Yet you heard Theophilus stick out against me.
Wouldn't give in even when I offered to take him straight to Bushrod's
grave in Saint John's Churchyard, where I had helped to lay him. That's
at the back of the whole thing, I tell you. If Theophilus had had a
little discipline, this would never have happened."
"All the same I hope you won't let it come to a sale," I responded, as a
bunch of telegrams was brought to him, and we settled down to our
morning's work.
In the afternoon when I went back to the doctor's, I found Sally in the
low canvas chair between the giant-of-battle rose-bush and the bleeding
hearts, with George Bolingbroke on the ground at her feet, reading to
her, I noticed at a glance, out of a book of poems. George hated
poetry--I had never forgotten his contemptuous boyish attitude toward
Latin--and the sight of him stretched there, his handsome figure at full
length, his impassive face flushed with a fine colour, produced in me a
curious irritation, which sounded in my voice when I spoke.
"I thought you scorned literature, George. Are you acting the part of a
gay deceiver?"
"Oh, it goes well on a day like this," he rejoined in his amiable
drawling manner; "the doctor has been quoting his favourite verse of
Horace to us. He has had trouble with his hybridising or something, so
he tells us--what is it, doctor? I'm no good at Latin."
Dr. Theophilus, who was planting oysters at the roots of a calla lily,
having discovered, as he repeatedly informed us, that such treatment
increased the number and size of the blossoms, raised his fine old head,
and stood up after wiping his trowel on the trimly mown grass in the
border.
"_Æquam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem_," he replied, rolling
the Latin words luxuriously on his tongue, as if he relished the
flavour. "That verse of the poet has sustained me in many and varied
afflictions. Not to know it is to dispense with an unfailing source of
consolation in trouble. When using it at a patient's bedside, I have
found that it invariably acted as a sedative to an excited mind. I
sometimes think," he added gently, "that if Tina had not been ignorant
of Latin, she would have had a--a less practical temper."
Picking up the trowel, which he had laid on the grass, he returned with
a calm soul to his difficulties, while Sally, looking up at me with
anxious eyes, said:--
"Something has happened, Ben. What is it?"
I broke into a laugh. "Only that that little dead-beat road in West
Virginia may restore my fortune, after all," I replied.
The next day I went to Wyanoke and reorganised the affairs of the little
road. Shortly afterwards orders for freight cars came in faster than we
were able to supply them, and we called at once on the cars of the Great
South Midland and Atlantic.
"If you weren't a friend, this would be a mighty good chance to squeeze
you," remarked the General; "we could keep your cars back until we'd
clean squelched your traffic, and then buy the little road up for a
song. It's business, but it isn't fair, and I'll be blamed if I'm going
to squelch a friend."
He did not squelch us, being as good as his word; the undeveloped coal
fields developed amazingly and the result was that before the year was
over, I had sold the little road at my own price to the big one. Then I
stood up and drew breath, like a man released from the weight of irons.
"We can go into our own home," I said joyfully to Sally. "In a year or
two, if all goes well, and I work hard, we'll be back again where we
were."
"Where we were?" she repeated, and there was, I thought, a listless note
in her voice.
"Doesn't it make you happy?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm glad, glad the debt is gone, and now you'll look young and
splendid again, won't you?"
"I'll try hard if you want me to."
"I do want you to," she answered, looking up at me with a smile.
The window was open, and a flood of sunshine fell on her pale brown
hair, as it rested against the high arm of a chintz-covered sofa. Her
hand, small and childlike, though less round and soft than it had been
two years ago, caressed my cheek when I bent over her. She was well
again, she was blooming, but the bloom was paler and more delicate, and
there was a fragility in her appearance which was a new and disturbing
sign of diminished strength. Would she ever, even when cradled in
luxuries, recover her buoyant health, her sparkling vitality, I
wondered.
The old Bland house, with the two great sycamores growing beside it, was
for sale; and thinking to please Sally, I bought it without her
knowledge, filled, as it was, with the Bland and Fairfax furniture,
which had surrounded Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca. On the day some eight
or nine months later that we moved into it the sycamores were budding,
and there were faint spring scents in the air.
"This is where you belong. This is home to you," I said as we stood on
the wide porch at the back, and looked down on the garden. "You will be
happy here, dearest."
"Oh, yes, I'll be happy here."
"It won't be so hard for you when I'm obliged to leave you alone. I'm
sorry I've had to be away so much of late. Have you been lonely?"
"I've taken up riding again. George has found me a new horse, a beauty.
To-morrow I shall follow the hounds with Bonny."
"Oh, be careful, Sally, promise me that you will be careful."
She turned with a laugh that sounded a little reckless.
"There's no pleasure in being careful, and I'm seeking pleasure," she
answered.
The next morning I went to New York for a couple of days, and when I
returned late one afternoon, I found Sally, in her riding habit, pouring
tea for Bonny Marshall and George Bolingbroke in the drawing-room.
I was very tired, my mind was engrossed in business, as it had been
engrossed since the day of the sale of the West Virginia and Wyanoke
Railroad, and I was about to pass upstairs to my dressing-room, when
George, catching sight of me, called to me to come in and exert my
powers of persuasion.
"I'm begging Sally to sell that horse, Beauchamp," he said. "She tried
to make him take a fence this afternoon and he balked and threw her. At
first we were frightened out of our wits, but she got up laughing and
insisted upon mounting him again on the spot."
"Of course you didn't let her," I retorted, with anger.
"Let her? Great Scott! have you been married to a Bland for nearly eight
years and are you still saying, 'let her'?"
"I mounted and rode on with the hunt," said Sally, looking at me with
shining eyes in which there was a defiant and reckless expression. "He
got quite away with me, but I held on and came in at the death, though
without a hat. Now my arms are so sore I shall hardly be able to do my
hair."
"Of course you're not to ride that horse again, Sally," I responded
sternly, forgetting my dusty clothes, forgetting Bonny's dancing black
eyes that never left my face while I stood there.
"Of course I am, Ben," rejoined Sally, laughing, while a high colour
rose to her forehead. "Of course I'm going to ride him to-morrow
afternoon when I go out with Bonny."
"Ah, don't, please," entreated Bonny, in evident distress; "he's really
an ugly brute, you know, dear, if he is so beautiful."
"I feel awfully mean about it, Ben," said George, "because, you see, I
got him for her."
"And you got him," I retorted, indignantly, "without knowing evidently a
thing about him."
"One can never know anything about a brute like that. He went like a
lamb as long as I was on him, but the trouble is that Sally has too
light a hand."
"He'd be all right with me," remarked Bonny, stretching out her arm, in
which the muscle was hard as steel. "See what a grip I have."
"I'll never give up, I'll never give up," said Sally, and though she
uttered the words with gaiety, the expression of defiance, of
recklessness, was still in her eyes.
When George and Bonny had gone, I tried in vain to shake this resolve,
which had in it something of the gentle, yet unconquerable, obstinacy of
Miss Matoaca.
"Promise me, Sally, that you will not attempt to ride that horse again,"
I entreated.
Turning from me, she walked slowly to the end of the room and bent over
the box of sweet alyssum, which still blossomed under a canary cage on
the window-sill. A cedar log was burning on the andirons, and the red
light of the flames fell on the tapestried furniture, on the quaint
inlaid spinet in one corner, and on the portrait above it of Miss Mitty
and Miss Matoaca clasping hands under a garland of roses.
"Will you promise me, dearest?" I asked again, for she did not answer.
Lifting her head from the flowers, she stood with her hand on one of the
delicate curtains, and her figure, in its straight black habit, drawn
very erect.
"I'll ride him," she responded quietly, "if--if he kills me."
"But why--why--what on earth is the use of taking so great a risk?" I
demanded.
A humorous expression shot into her face, and I saw her full, red lips
grow tremulous with laughter.
"That," she answered, after a moment, "is my ambition. All of us have an
ambition, you know, women as well as men."
"An ambition?" I repeated, and looked in mystification at the portrait
above the spinet.
"It sounds strange to you," she went on, "but why shouldn't I have one?
I was a very promising horsewoman before my marriage, and my ambition
now is to--to go after Bonny. Only Bonny says I can't," she added
regretfully, "because of my hands."
"They are too small?"
"Too small and too light. They can't hold things."
"Well, they've managed to hold one at any rate," I responded gaily,
though I added seriously the minute afterward, "If you'll let me sell
that horse, darling, I'll give you anything on God's earth that you
want."
"But suppose I don't want anything on God's earth except that horse?"
"There's no sense in that," I blurted out, in bewilderment. "What in
thunder is there about the brute that has so taken your fancy?"
Her hand fell from the curtain, and plucking a single blossom of sweet
alyssum, she came back to the hearth holding it to her lips.
"He has taken my fancy," she replied, "because he is exciting--and I am
craving excitement."
"But you never used to want excitement."
"People change, all the poets and philosophers tell us. I've wanted it
very badly indeed for the last six or eight months."
"Just since we've recovered our money?"
"Well, one can't have excitement without money, can one? It costs a good
deal. Beauchamp sold for sixteen hundred dollars."
"He'd sell for sixteen to-morrow if I had my way."
"But you haven't. He's the only excitement I have and I mean to keep
him. I shall go out again with the hounds on Saturday."
"If you do, you'll make me miserable, Sally. I shan't be able to do a
stroke of work."
"Then you'll be very foolish, Ben," she responded, and when I would have
still pressed the point, she ran out of the room with the remark that
she must have a hot bath before dinner. "If I don't I'll be too stiff to
mount," she called back defiantly as she went up the staircase.
All night I worried over the supremacy of Beauchamp, but on the morrow
she was kept in bed by the results of her fall, and before she was up
again, George had spirited the horse off somewhere to a farm in the
country.
"I'd have turned horse thief before I'd have let her get on him again,"
he said. "I bought the brute, so I had the best right to dispose of him
as I wanted to."
"Well, I hope you'll do better next time," I returned. "Sally has got
some absurd idea in her head about rivalling Bonny Marshall, but she
never will because she isn't built that way."
"No, she isn't built that way," he agreed, "and I'm glad of it. When I
want a boy I'd rather have him in breeches than in skirts. Is she out of
bed yet?"
"She was up this morning, and on the point of telephoning to the stables
when I left the house."
He laughed softly. "Well, my word goes at the stables," he rejoined, "so
you needn't worry. I'll not let any harm come to her."
The tone in which he spoke, pleasant as it was, wounded my pride of
possession in some inexplicable manner. Sally was safe! It was all taken
out of my hands, and the only thing that remained for me was to return
with a tranquil mind to my affairs. In spite of myself this constant
beneficent intervention of George in my life fretted my temper. If he
would only fail sometimes! If he would only make a mistake! If he would
only attend to his own difficulties, and leave mine to go wrong if they
pleased!
This was on my way up-town in the afternoon, and when I reached home, I
found Sally lying on a couch in her upstairs sitting-room, with an uncut
novel in her hands.
"Ben, did you sell Beauchamp?" she asked, as I entered, and her tone was
full of suppressed resentment, of indignant surprise.
"I'm sorry to say I didn't, dear," I responded cheerfully, "for I should
certainly have done so if George hadn't been too quick for me."
"It was George, then," she said, and her voice lost its resentment.
"Yes, it was George--everything is George," I retorted, in an irascible
tone.
Her eyebrows arched, not playfully as they were used to do, but in
surprise or perplexity.
"He has been very good to me all my life," she answered quietly.
"I know, I know," I said, repenting at once of my temper, "and if you
want another horse, Sally, you shall have it--George will find you a
gentle one this time."
She shook her head, smiling a little.
"I don't want a gentle one. I wanted Beauchamp, and since he has gone I
don't think I care to ride any more. Bonny is right, I suppose, I could
never keep up with her."
"Just as you like, sweetheart, but for my part, I feel easier, somehow,
when you don't go out with the hounds. I'd rather you wouldn't do such
rough riding."
"That's because like most men you have an ideal of a 'faire ladye,'" she
answered, mockingly. "I'm not sure, however, that the huntress hasn't
the best of it. What an empty existence the 'faire ladye' must have
led!"
At first I thought her determination was uttered in jest, and would not
endure through the night; but as the weeks and the months went by and
she still refused to consider the purchase of the various horses George
put through their paces before her, I realised that she really meant, as
she had said, to give up her brief dream of excelling Bonny. Then, for a
few months in the spring and summer, she turned to gardening with
passion, and aided by Dr. Theophilus and George, she planted a cart-load
of bulbs in our square of ground at the back. When I came up late now, I
would find the three of them poring over flower catalogues, with
gathered brows and thoughtful, enquiring faces.
"There's nothing like a love of the trowel for making friends," remarked
the old man, one May afternoon, when I found them resting from their
labours while they drank tea on the porch; "it's a pity you haven't time
to take it up, Ben. Now, young George there has developed a most
extraordinary talent for gardening that he never knew he possessed until
I cultivated it. I shouldn't wonder if it took the place of the horse
with him in the end. What do you say, Sally?" he added, turning to where
Sally and George were leaning together over the railing, with their eyes
on a bed of Oriental poppies. "I was telling Ben that I shouldn't wonder
if George's taste for flowers would not finally triumph over his fancy
for the horse."
For a minute Sally did not look round, and when at last she turned, her
face wore a defiant and reckless expression, as it had done that
afternoon when Beauchamp had thrown her.
"I'm not sure, doctor," she answered; "after all flowers are tame sport,
aren't they? And George is like me--what he wants is excitement."
"I'm sorry to hear that, my dear, a gentle and quiet pursuit is a source
of happiness. You remember what Horace says--"
"Ah, I know, doctor, but did even Horace remember what he said while he
was young?"
George was still gazing attentively down on the bed of Oriental poppies
at the foot of the steps, and though he had taken no part in the
conversation, something in his back, in the rigid look of his shoulders,
as though his muscles were drawn and tense, made me say suddenly:
"If George has changed his hobby from horse-racing to flowers, I'll
begin to expect the General to start collecting insects."
At this George wheeled squarely upon me, and in his dark, flushed face
there was the set look of a man that has taken a high jump.
"It's a bad plan to pin all your pleasure on one thing, Ben," he said.
"If you put all your eggs in one basket you're more than likely to stub
your toe."
"Well, a good deal depends upon how wisely you may have chosen your
pursuit," commented the doctor, pushing his spectacles away from his
eyes to his hair, which was still thick and long; "I don't believe that
a man can make a mistake in selecting either flowers or insects for his
life's interest. The choice between the two is merely a question of
temperament, I suppose, and though I myself confess to a leaning toward
plants, I seriously considered once devoting my declining years to the
study of the habits of beetles. Your suggestion as to George,
however,--old George, I am alluding to,--is a capital one, and I shall
call his attention to it the next time I see him. He couldn't do better,
I am persuaded, than bend his remaining energies in the direction of
insects."
He paused to drink his tea, nodding gently over the rim of his cup to
Bonny Marshall and Bessy Dandridge, who came through one of the long
windows out upon the porch.
"So you've really stopped for a minute," remarked Bonny merrily,
swinging her floating silk train as if it were the skirt of a riding
habit, "and even Ben has fallen out of the race long enough to get a
glimpse of his wife. Have stocks tripped him up again, poor fellow? Do
you know, Sally, it's perfectly scandalous the way you are never seen in
public together. At the reception at the Governor's the other night, one
of those strange men from New York asked me if George were your husband.
Now, that's what I call positively improper--I really felt the
atmosphere of the divorce court around me when he said it--and my
grandmama assures me that if such a thing had happened to _your_
grandmama, Caroline Matilda Fairfax, she would never have held up her
head again. 'But neither morals nor manners are what they were when
Caroline Matilda and I were young,' she added regretfully, 'and it is
due, I suppose, to the war and to the intrusion into society of all
these new people that no one ever heard of.' When I mentioned the guests
at the two last receptions I'd been to, if you will believe me, she had
never heard of a single name,--'all mushrooms,' she declared."
Her eyes, dancing roguishly, met mine over the tea-table, and a bright
blush instantly overspread her face, as if a rose-coloured search-light
had fallen on her.
The embarrassment which I always felt in her presence became suddenly as
acute as physical soreness, and the blush in her face served only to
illuminate her consciousness of my difference, of my roughness, of the
fact that externally, at least, I had never managed to shake myself free
from a resemblance to the market boy who had once brought his basket of
potatoes to the door of this very house. The "magnificent animal," I
knew, had never appealed to her except as it was represented in
horse-flesh; and yet the "magnificent animal" was what in her eyes I
must ever remain. I looked at George, leaning against a white column,
and his appearance of perfect self-sufficiency, his air of needing
nothing, changed my embarrassment into a smothered sensation of anger.
And as in the old days of my first great success, this anger brought
with it, through some curious association of impulses, a fierce, almost
a frenzied, desire for achievement. Here, in the little world of
tradition and sentiment, I might show still at a disadvantage, but
outside, in the open, I could respond freely to the lust for power, to
the passion for supremacy, which stirred my blood. Turning, with a
muttered excuse about letters to read, I went into the house, and closed
my study door behind me with a sense of returning to a friendly and
familiar atmosphere.
Through the rest of the year Sally devoted herself with energy to the
cultivation of flowers; but when the following spring opened, after a
hard winter, she seemed to have grown listless and indifferent, and when
I spoke of the garden, she merely shook her head and pointed to an
unworked border at the foot of the grey-wall.
"I can't make anything grow, Ben. All those brown sticks down there are
the only signs of the bulbs I set out last autumn with my own hands.
Nothing comes up as it ought to."
"Perhaps you need pipes like the doctor," I suggested.
"Oh, no, that would uproot the old shrubs, and besides, I am tired of
it, I think."
She was lying on the couch in her sitting-room, a pile of novels on a
table beside her, and the delicacy in her appearance, the transparent
fineness of her features, of her hands, awoke in me the feeling of
anxiety I had felt so often during the year after little Benjamin's
death.
"I'm sorry I can't get up to luncheon now, darling, but we are making a
big railroad deal. What have you been doing all day long by yourself?"
She looked up at me, and I remembered the face of Miss Matoaca, as I had
seen it against the red firelight on the afternoon when Sally and I had
gone in to tell her of our engagement.
"I didn't go out," she answered. "It was raining so hard that I stayed
by the fire."
"You've been lying here all day alone?"
"Bonny Page came in for a few minutes."
"Have you read?"
"No, I've been thinking."
"Thinking of what, sweetheart?"
"Oh, so many things. You've come up again, haven't you, Ben, splendidly!
Luck is with you, the General says, and whatever you touch prospers."
"Yes, I've come up, but this is the crisis. If I slip now, if I make a
false move, if I draw out, I'm as dead as a door-nail. But give me five
or ten years of hard work and breathless thinking, and I'll be as big a
man as the General."
"As the General?" she repeated gently, and played with the petals of an
American Beauty rose on the table beside her.
"As soon as I'm secure, as soon as I can slacken work a bit, I'm going
to cut all this and take you away. We'll have a second honeymoon when
that time comes."
"In five or ten years?"
"Perhaps sooner. Meanwhile, isn't there something that I can do for you?
Is there anything on God's earth that you want? Would you like a string
of pearls?"
She shook her head with a laugh. "No, I don't want a string of pearls.
Is it time now to dress for dinner?"
"Would you mind if I didn't change, dear? I'm so tired that I shall
probably fall asleep over the dessert."
An evening or two later, when I came up after seven o'clock, I thought
that she had been crying, and taking her in my arms, I passionately
kissed the tear marks away.
"There's but one thing to do, Sally. You must go away. What do you say
to Europe?"
"With you?"
"I wish to heaven it could be with me, but if I shirk this deal now, I'm
done for, and if I stick it out, it may mean future millions. Why not
ask Bessy Dandridge?"
"I don't think I want to go with Bessy Dandridge."
Her tone troubled me, it was so gentle, so reserved, and walking to the
window, I stood gazing out upon the April rain that dripped softly
through the budding sycamores. I felt that I ought to go, and yet I knew
that unless I gave up my career, it was out of the question. The
railroad deal was, as I had said, very important, and if I were to
withdraw from it now, it would probably collapse and bring down on me
the odium of my associates. After my desperate failure of less than five
years ago, I was just recovering my ground, and the incidents of that
disaster were still too recent to permit me to breathe freely. My name
had suffered little because my personal tragedy had been regarded as a
part of the general panic, and I had, in the words of George
Bolingbroke, "gone to smashes with honour." Yet I was not secure now; I
had not reached the top of the ladder, but was merely mounting. "It's
for Sally's sake that I'm doing it," I said to myself, suddenly
comforted by the reflection; "without Sally the whole thing might go to
ruin and I wouldn't hold up my hand. But I must make her proud of me. I
must justify her choice in the eyes of her friends." And the balm of
this thought seemed to lighten my weight of trouble and to appease my
conscience. "It isn't as if I were doing it for myself, or my own
ambition. I am really doing it for her--everything is for her. If I can
hold on now, in a few years I'll give her millions to spend." Then I
remembered that the last time I had gone motoring with her it had
appeared to do her good, and that she had remarked she preferred a car
with a red lining.
"I tell you what, sweetheart," I said, going back to her, "as I can't
take you away, I'll buy you a new motor car with a red lining and I'll
take you out every blessed afternoon I can get off from the office.
You'll like that, won't you?" I asked eagerly.
"Yes, I'll like that," she replied, with an effort at animation, while
she bent her face over the rose in her hand.
A week later I bought the motor car, the handsomest I could find, with
the softest red lining; and when May came, I went out with her whenever
I could break away from my work. But the pressure was great, the General
was failing and leaned on me, and I was over head and ears in a dozen
outside schemes that needed only my amazing energy to push them to
success. Never had my financial insight appeared so infallible, never
had my "genius" for affairs shone so brilliantly. The years of poverty
had increased, not dissipated, my influence, and I had come up all the
stronger for the experience that had sent me down. The lesson that a
weaker man might have succumbed beneath, I had absorbed into myself, and
was now making use of as I had made use of every incident, bad or good,
in my life. I passed on, I accumulated, but I did not squander. Little
things, as well as great things, served me for material, and during
those first years of my recovery, I became by far the most brilliant
figure in my world of finance. "Pile all the bu'sted stocks in the
market on his shoulders, and he'll still come out on top," chuckled the
General. "The best thing that ever happened to you, Ben, barring the
toting of potatoes, was the blow on the head that sent you under water.
A little fellow would have drowned, but you knew how to float."
"I'd agree with you about its being the best thing, except--except for
Sally."
"What's the matter with Sally? Is she going cracked? You know I always
said she was the image of her aunt--Miss Matoaca Bland."
"She has never recovered. Her health seems to have given way."
"She needs coddling, that's the manner of women and babies. Do you
coddle her? It's worth while, though some men don't know how to do it.
Lord, Lord, I remember when my poor mother was on her death-bed and my
father got on his knees and asked her if he'd been a good husband (she
was his third wife and died of her tenth child), she looked at him with
a kind of gentle resentment and replied: 'You were a saint, I suppose,
Samuel, but I'd rather have had a sinner that would have coddled me.'
She was the prim, flat-bosomed type, too, just like Miss Mitty Bland,
and my father said afterwards, crying like a baby, that he had so much
respect for her he would as soon have thought of trying to coddle a
Lombardy poplar. Poplar or mimosa tree, I tell you, they are all made
that way, every last one of them--and nothing on earth made poor Miss
Matoaca a fire-eater and a disturber of the peace except that she didn't
have a man to coddle her."
"I give Sally everything under heaven I can think of, but she doesn't
appear to want it."
"Keep on giving, it's the only way. You'll see her begin to pick up
presently before you know it. They ain't rational, my boy, that's the
whole truth about 'em, they ain't rational. If Miss Matoaca had belonged
to a rational sex, do you think she'd have killed herself trying to get
on an equality with us? You can't make a pullet into a rooster by
teaching it to crow, as my old mammy used to say." For a minute he was
silent, and appeared to be meditating. "I tell you what I'll do, Ben,"
he said at last, with a flash of inspiration, "I'll go in with you and
see if I can't cheer up Sally a bit."
When we reached my door, he let the reins fall over the back of his old
horse, and getting out, hobbled, with my assistance, upstairs, and into
Sally's sitting-room, where we found George Bolingbroke, looking
depressed and sullen.
She was charmingly dressed, as usual, and as the General entered, she
came forward to meet him with the gracious manner which some one had
told me was a part, not of her Bland, but of her Fairfax inheritance.
"That's a pretty tea-gown you've got on," observed the great man, in the
playful tone in which he might have remarked to a baby that it was
wearing a beautiful bib. "You haven't been paying much attention to
fripperies of late, Ben tells me. Have you seen any hats? I don't know
anything better for a woman's low spirits, my dear, than a trip to New
York to buy a hat."
She laughed merrily, while her eyes met George Bolingbroke's over the
General's head.
"I bought six hats last month," she replied.
"And you didn't feel any better?"
"Not permanently. Then Ben got me a diamond bracelet." She held out her
arm, with the bracelet on her wrist, which looked thin and transparent.
The General bent his bald head over the trinket, which he examined as
attentively as if it had been a report of the Great South Midland and
Atlantic Railroad.
"Ben's got good taste," he observed; "that's a pretty bracelet."
"Yes, it's a pretty bracelet."
"But that didn't make you feel any brighter?"
"Oh, I'm well," she responded, laughing. "I've just been telling George
I'm so well I'm going to a ball with him."
"To a ball," I said; "are you strong enough for that, Sally?"
"I'm quite strong, I'm well, I feel wildly gay."
"It's the best thing for her," remarked the General. "Don't stop her,
Ben, let her go."
At dinner that night, in a gorgeous lace gown, with pearls on her throat
and in her hair, she was cheerful, animated, almost, as she had said,
wildly gay. When George came for her, I put her into the carriage.
"Are you all right?" I asked anxiously. "Are you sure you are strong
enough, Sally?"
"Quite strong. What will you do, Ben?"
"I've got to work. There are some papers to draw up. Don't let her stay
late, George."
"Oh, I'll take care of her," said George. "Good-night."
She leaned out, touching my hand. "You'll be in bed when I come back.
Good-night."
The carriage rolled off, and entering the house I went into the library,
where I worked until twelve o'clock. Then as Sally had not returned and
I had a hard day ahead of me, I went upstairs to bed.
She did not wake me when she came in, and in the morning I found her
sleeping quietly, with her cheek pillowed on her open palm, and a
pensive smile on her lips. After breakfast, when I came up to speak to
her before going out, she was sitting up in bed, in a jacket of blue
satin and a lace cap, drinking her coffee.
"Did you have a good time?" I asked, kissing her. "Already you look
better."
"I danced ever so many dances. Do you know, Ben, I believe it was
diversion I needed. I've thought too much and I'm going to stop."
"That's right, dance on if it helps you."
"I can't get that year on Church Hill out of my mind."
"Forget it, sweetheart, it's over; forget it."
"Yes, it's over," she repeated, and then as she lay back, in her blue
satin jacket, on the embroidered pillows and smiled up at me, I saw in
her face a reflection of the faint wonder which was the inherited look
of the Blands in regarding life.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE GROWING DISTANCE
The memory of this look was with me as I went, a little later, down the
block to the car line, but meeting the General at the corner, all other
matters were crowded out of my mind by the gravity of the news he leaned
out of his buggy to impart.
"Well, it's come at last, Ben, just as I said it would," he remarked
cheerfully; "Theophilus is to be sold out at four o'clock this
afternoon."
"I'd forgotten all about it, General, but do you really mean you will
let it come to a public auction?"
"It's the only way on God's earth to stop his extravagance. Of course
I'm going to buy the house in at the end. I've given the agent orders.
Theophilus ain't going to suffer, but he's got to have a lesson and I'm
the only one who can teach it. A little judicious discipline right now
will make him a better and a happier man for the remainder of his life.
He's too opinionated, that's the trouble with him and always has been.
He's got some absurd idea in his head now that I ought to quit the
railroad and begin watching insects. Actually brought me a microscope
and some ants in a little box that he had had sent all the way from
California. Wanted me to build 'em a glass house in my garden, and spend
my time looking at 'em. 'Look here, Theophilus,' I said, 'I haven't come
to my dotage yet, and when I get there, I'm going to take up something a
little bigger than an insect. From a railroad to an ant is too long a
jump."
"But this auction, General, I'm very much worried about it. You know I'd
always intended to take over that mortgage, but, to tell the truth, it
escaped my memory."
"Oh, leave that to me, leave that to me," responded the great man
serenely. "Theophilus ain't going to suffer, but a little discipline
won't do him any harm."
His plan was well laid, I saw, but the best-laid plans, as the great man
himself might have informed me, are not always those that are destined
to reach maturity. When I had parted from him, I fell, almost
unconsciously, to scheming on my own account, and the result was that
before going into my office, I looked up the real estate agent who had
charge of the auction, and took over the mortgage which too great an
indulgence in roses had forced upon Dr. Theophilus. In my luncheon hour
I rushed up to the house, where I found Mrs. Clay, with a big wooden
ladle in her hand, wandering distractedly between the outside kitchen
and the little garden, where the doctor was placidly spraying his roses
with a solution of kerosene oil.
"I knew it would come," said the poor lady, in tears; "no amount of
preserves and pickles could support the extravagance of Theophilus. More
than two years ago George Bolingbroke warned me that I should end my
days in the poorhouse, and it has come at last. As for Theophilus, even
the thought of the poorhouse does not appear to disturb him. He does
nothing but walk around and repeat some foolish Latin verse about
Æquam--æquam--until I am sick of the very sound--"
When I explained to her that the auction would be postponed, at least
for another century, she recovered her temper and her spirit, and
observed emphatically that she hoped the lesson would do Theophilus
good.
"May I go out to him now?"
"Oh, yes, you'll find him somewhere in the garden. He has just been in
with a watering-pot to ask for kerosene oil."
In the centre of the gravelled walk, between the shining rows of oyster
shells, the doctor stood energetically spraying his roses. At the sound
of my step he looked round with a tranquil face, his long white hair
blowing in the breeze above his spectacles, which he wore, as usual when
he was not reading, pushed up on his forehead.
"Ah, Ben, you find us afflicted, but not despondent," he observed. "Now
is the time, as I just remarked to Tina a minute ago, to prove the
unfailing support of a knowledge of Latin and of the poet Horace. _Æquam
memento_--"
"I'm afraid, doctor, I haven't time for Horace," I returned, ruthlessly
cutting short his enjoyment, while the sonorous sentence still rolled in
his mouth; "but I've attended to this affair of the mortgage, and you
shan't be bothered again. Why on earth didn't you come to me sooner
about it?"
Bending over, he plucked a rosebud with a canker at the heart, and stood
meditatively surveying it. "An Anna von Diesbach," he observed, "and
when perfect a most beautiful rose. The truth was, my boy, that I felt a
delicacy about approaching my friends in the hour of my misfortunes. Old
George I did go to in my extremity, but I fear, Ben,--I seriously fear
that I have estranged old George by making him a present of a little box
of ants. He imagines, I fancy, that I intended a reflection upon his
intelligence. Because the ant is small, he concludes, unreasonably, that
it is unworthy. On the contrary, as I endeavoured to convince him, it
possesses a degree of sagacity and foresight the human being might well
envy--"
"I can't stop now, doctor, I'm in too great a rush, but remember, if you
ever have a few hundred dollars you'd like me to turn over for you, I'm
at your service. At all events, preserve your calm soul and leave me to
contend with your difficulties--"
"The word 'preserve,'" commented the doctor, "though used in a different
and less practical sense, reminds me of Tina. She has sacrificed her
peace of mind to preserves, as I told her this morning. Even I should
find it impossible to maintain an equable character, if I lived in the
atmosphere of a stove and devoted my energies to a kettle. One's
occupation has, without doubt, a marked influence upon one's attitude
towards the universe. This was in my thoughts entirely when I suggested
to a man of old George's headstrong and undisciplined nature that he
would do well to investigate the habits of a sober and industrious
insect like the ant. He has led an improvident life, and I thought that
as he neared his end, whatever would promote a philosophic cast of mind
would inevitably benefit his declining years--"
"He doesn't like to be reminded that they are declining, doctor, that's
the trouble," I returned, as I shook hands hurriedly, and went on down
the gravelled walk between the oyster shells to the gate that opened,
beyond the currant bushes, out into the street.
My readjustment of the doctor's affairs had occupied no small part of my
working day, and it was even later than usual when I arrived at home,
too tired to consider dressing for dinner. At the door old Esdras
announced that Sally had already gone to dine with Bonny Marshall, and
would go to the theatre afterwards.
"Was she alone, Esdras?"
"Naw, suh, Marse George he done come fur her en ca'ried her off."
"Well, I'll dine just as I am, and as soon as it's ready."
The house was empty and deserted without Sally, and the perfume of a
mimosa tree, which floated in on the warm breeze as I entered the
drawing-room, came to me like the sweet, vague scent of her hair and her
gown. A dim light burned under a pink shade in one corner, and so quiet
appeared the quaint old room, with its faded cashmere rugs and its
tapestried furniture, that the eyes of the painted Blands and Fairfaxes
seemed alive as they looked down on me from the high white walls. From
his wire cage, shrouded in a silk cover, the new canary piped a single
enquiring note as he heard my step.
I dined alone, waited on in a paternal, though condescending, manner by
old Esdras, and when I had finished my coffee I sat for a few minutes
with a cigar on the porch, where the branches of the mimosa tree in full
bloom drooped over the white railing. While I sat there, I thought
drowsily of many things--of the various financial schemes in which I was
now involved; of the big railroad deal which I had refused to shirk and
which meant possible millions; of the fact that the General was rapidly
aging, and had already spoken of resigning the presidency of the Great
South Midland and Atlantic. Then there flashed before me suddenly, in
the midst of my business reflections, the look with which Sally had
regarded me that morning while she lay, in her blue satin jacket, on the
embroidered pillows.
"How alike all the Blands are," I thought sleepily, as I threw the end
of my cigar out into the garden and rose to go upstairs to bed; "I never
noticed until of late how much Sally is growing to resemble her Aunt
Matoaca."
At midnight, after two hours' restless sleep, I awoke to find her
standing before the bureau, in a gown of silver gauze, which gave her an
illusive appearance of being clothed in moonlight. When I called her,
and she turned and came toward me, I saw that there was a brilliant,
unnatural look in her face, as though she had been dancing wildly or
were in a fever. And this brilliancy seemed only to accentuate the
sharpened lines of her features, with their suggestion of delicacy, of a
too transparent fineness.
"You were asleep, Ben. I am sorry I waked you," she said.
"What is the matter, you are so flushed?" I asked.
"It was very warm in the theatre. I shan't go again until autumn."
"I don't believe you are well, dear. Isn't it time for you to get out of
the city?"
Her arms were raised to unfasten the pearl necklace at her throat, and
while I watched her face in the mirror, I saw that the flush suddenly
left it and it grew deadly white.
"It's that queer pain in my back," she said, sinking into a chair, and
hiding her eyes in her hands. "It comes on like this without warning.
I've had it ever--ever since that year on Church Hill."
In an instant I was beside her, catching her in my arms as she swayed
toward me.
"What can I do for you, dearest? Shall I get you a glass of wine?"
"No, it goes just as it comes," she answered, letting her hands fall
from her face, and looking at me with a smile. "There, I'm better now,
but I think you're right. I need to go out of the city. Even if I were
to stay here," she added, "you would be almost always away."
"Go North with Bonny Marshall, as she suggested, and I'll join you for
two weeks in August."
Shrinking gently out of my arms, she sat with the unfastened bodice of
her gown slipping away from her shoulders, and her face bent over the
pearl necklace which she was running back and forth through her fingers.
"Bonny and Ned and George all want me to go to Bar Harbor," she said,
after a moment. Then she raised her eyes and looked at me with the
expression of defiance, of recklessness, I had seen in them first on the
afternoon when Beauchamp had thrown her. "If you want me to go, too,
that will decide it."
"Of course I shall miss you,--I missed you this evening,--but I believe
it's the thing for you."
"Then I'll go," she responded quietly, and turning away, as if the
conversation were over, she went into her dressing-room to do her hair
for the night.
Two weeks later she went, and during her absence the long hot summer
dragged slowly by while I plunged deeper and deeper into the whirlpool
of affairs. In August I made an effort to spend the promised two weeks
with her, but on the third day of my visit, I was summoned home by a
telegram; and once back in the city, the General's rapidly failing
health kept me close as a prisoner at his side. When October came and I
met her at the station, I noticed, with my first glance, that the look
of excitement, of strained and unnatural brilliancy, had returned to her
appearance. Some inward flame, burning steadily at a white heat, shone
in her eyes and in her altered, transparent features.
"It's good to have you back again, heaven knows," I remarked, as we
drove up the street between the scattered trees in their changing
October foliage. "The house has been like a prison."
For the first time since she had stepped from the train, she leaned
nearer and looked at me attentively, as if she were trying to recall
some detail to her memory.
"You're different, Ben," she said; "you look so--so careless."
Her tone was gentle, yet it fell on my ears with a curious detachment, a
remoteness, as if in thought, at least, she were standing off somewhere
in an unapproachable place.
"I've had nobody to keep me up and I've grown seedy," I replied, trying
to speak with lightness. "Now I'll begin grooming again, but all the
same, I've made a pretty pile of money for you this summer."
"Oh, money!" she returned indifferently, "I've heard nothing but money
since I went away. Is there a spot on earth, I wonder, where in this age
they worship another God?"
"I know one person who doesn't worship it, and that's Dr. Theophilus."
She laughed softly.
"Well, the doctor and I will have to set up a little altar of our own."
For the first month after her return, I hoped that she had come back to
a quieter and a more healthful life; but with the beginning of the
winter season, she resumed the ceaseless rush of gaiety in which she had
lived for the last two years. She was rarely at home now in the
evenings; I came up always too tired or too busy to go out with her, and
after dining alone, without dressing, I would hurry into my study for an
hour's work with Bradley, or more often doze for a while before the
cedar logs, with a cigar in my hand. On the few occasions when she
remained at home, our conversation languished feebly because the one
subject which engrossed my thoughts was received by her with candid, if
smiling, scorn.
"I sometimes wish, Ben," she remarked one evening while we sat by the
hearth for a few minutes before going upstairs, "that you'd begin to
learn Johnson's Dictionary again. I'm sure it's more interesting than
stocks."
The red light of the flames shone on her exquisite fineness, on that
"look of the Blands," which lent its peculiar distinction, its
suggestion of the "something else," to her delicate features and to her
long slender figure, which had grown a little too thin. Between her and
myself, divided as we were merely by the space of the fireside, I felt
suddenly that there stretched both a mental and a physical distance; and
this sense of unlikeness,--which I had become aware of for the first
time, when she stepped from the train that October morning, between
Bonny and George,--grew upon me until I could no longer tell whether it
was my pride or my affection that suffered. I had grown careless, I
knew, of "the little things" that she prized, while I so passionately
pursued the big ones to which she appeared still indifferent. Meeting my
image in one of the old gilt-framed mirrors between the windows, I saw
that my features had taken the settled and preoccupied look of the
typical man of affairs, that my figure, needing the exercise I had had
no time for of late, had grown already unelastic and heavy. Had she
noticed, I wondered, that the "magnificent animal" was losing his hold?
Only that afternoon I had heard her laughing with George over some
trivial jest which they had not explained; and this very laughter,
because I did not understand it, had seemed, in some subtle way, to draw
them to each other and farther from me. Yet she was mine, not George's,
and the gloss on her hair, the scent of her gown, the pearls at her
throat, were all the things that my money had given her.
"I've got terribly one-ideaed, Sally, I know," I said, answering her
remark after a long silence; "but some day, in a year or two perhaps,
when I'm stronger, more successful, I'll cut it all for a time, and
we'll go to Europe together. We'll have our second honeymoon as soon as
I can get away."
"Remember I've a reception Thursday night, please, Ben," she responded,
brushing my sentimental suggestion lightly aside.
"By Jove, I'm awfully sorry, but I've arranged to meet a man in New York
on Wednesday. I simply had to do it. There was no way out of it."
"Then you won't be here?"
"I'll make a desperate effort to get back on the seven o'clock train
from Washington. That will be in time?"
"Yes, that will be in time. You are in New York and Washington
two-thirds of the month now."
"It's a beastly shame, too, but it won't last."
With a smothered yawn, she rose from her chair, and went over to the
canary cage, raising the silk cover, while she put her lips to the wires
and piped softly.
"Dicky is fast asleep," she remarked, turning away, "and you, Ben, are
nodding. How dull the evenings are when one has nothing to do."
The next day I went to New York, and leaving Washington on Thursday
afternoon, I had expected to reach Richmond in time to appear at Sally's
reception by nine o'clock that evening. But a wreck on the road caused
the train to be held back for several hours, and it was already late
when I jumped from the cab at my door, and hurried under the awning
across the pavement. The sound of stringed instruments playing softly
reached me as it had done so many years ago on the night when I first
crossed the threshold; and a minute afterwards, when I went hastily up
the staircase, in its covering of white, and its festoons of smilax,
pretty girls made way for me, with laughing reprimands on their lips.
Dressing as quickly as I could, I came down again and met the same
rebukes from the same charming and smiling faces.
"You are really the most outrageous man I know," observed Bonny
Marshall, stopping me at the foot of the staircase. "Poor Sally has been
so awfully worried that she hasn't any colour, and I've advised her
simply to engage George as permanent proxy. He is taking your place this
evening quite charmingly."
The splendour of her appearance, rather than the severity of her words,
held me bound and speechless. She was the most beautiful woman, it was
generally admitted, in all Virginia, and in her spangled gown, which
fell away from her superb shoulders, there was something brilliant and
barbaric about her that went like strong wine to the head. A minute
later she passed on, surrounded by former discarded lovers; and before
entering the drawing-room--where Sally was standing between George
Bolingbroke and a man whom I did not know--I paused behind a tub of
flowering azalea, and watched the brightly coloured gowns of the women
as they flitted back and forth over the shining floor. It was a year
since I had been out even to dine, and while I stood there, the music,
the lights, and the gaily dressed, laughing women produced in me the old
boyish consciousness of the disadvantage of my size, of my awkwardness,
of my increasing weight. I remembered suddenly the figure of President
as he had loomed on the night of our first dinner party between the
feathery palm branches in the brilliantly lighted hall; and a sense of
kinship with my own family, with my own past, awoke not in my thoughts,
but in my body. Across the threshold, only a few steps away, I could see
Sally receiving her guests in her gracious Fairfax manner, with George
and the man whom I did not know at her side; and whenever George turned
and spoke, as he did always at the right instant, I was struck by the
perfect agreement, the fitness, in their appearance. These things that
she valued--these adornments of the outside of existence--were not in my
power to bestow except when they could be bought with money. How large,
how heavy, I should have appeared there in George's place, which was
mine. For the first time in my life a contempt for mere wealth, and for
the position which the amassment of wealth confers, entered my heart. In
seeking to give money had I, in reality, sacrificed the ability to give
the things that she valued far more? Surrounded by the flowers and the
lights and the music of the stringed instruments, I saw her in my memory
framed in the long window of our bedroom on Church Hill, with the dim
grey garden behind her, and the breeze, fragrant with jessamine, blowing
the thin folds of her gown. Some clairvoyant insight, purchased, not by
success, but by the suffering of those months, opened my eyes. What I
had lost, I saw now, was Sally herself--not the outward woman, but the
inner spirit, the fineness of sympathy, the quickness of understanding.
The things that she could have taught me were the finer beauties of
life--and these I had scorned to learn because they could not be grasped
in the hands. The objective, the external, was what I had worshipped,
and our real division had come, not from the accident of our different
beginnings, but from the choice that had committed us to opposite ends.
Some of the guests I knew, and these spoke to me as they passed; others
I had never seen, and these walked by with level abstracted eyes fixed
on the little group surrounding Sally and George. It was not only
Sally's "set"--the older aristocratic circle--that was represented, I
knew, for in the throng I recognised many of "the new people"--of the
"mushrooms," of whom Bonny's grandmama had spoken with scorn. Once
George turned and came toward the doorway, and the General, starting
somewhere from a corner, observed in his loud hilarious voice, "I don't
know what kind of husband you'd have made, George, but, by Jove, you do
mighty well as a 'hanger-on'!"
What George's response was I could not hear, but from the dark flushed
look of his features, I judged that he had not received the attack with
his accustomed amiability. Then, as he was about to pass into the hall,
his eyes fell on me, standing behind the tub of azalea, and a low
whistle of surprise broke from his lips.
"So here you are, Ben! We'd given you up at least three hours ago."
"There was a wreck, and the train was delayed."
"Well, come in and do your duty, or what remains of it. It's no fun
acting host in another man's house, when you don't know where he keeps
his cigars. Sally, Ben's turned up, after all, at the last minute, when
the hard work is over."
Crossing the threshold, I joined the little group, shaking hands here
and there, while Sally made running comments in a voice that sounded
hopelessly animated and cheerful. She was looking very pale, there were
dark violet circles under her eyes, and her gown of some faint sea-green
shade brought out the delicate sharpened lines of her face and throat.
The flame, which had burnt so steadily for the last year, seemed to die
out slowly, in a waning flicker, while she stood there.
George, pushing me aside, came back with a glass of wine and a biscuit.
"Drink this, Sally," he said. "No, don't shake your head, drink it."
She held out her hand for the glass, but after she had taken it from
him, before she could raise it to her lips, a tremor of anguish that was
almost like a convulsion passed into her face. The glass fell from her
hand, and the wine, splashing over her gown, stained it in a red streak
from bosom to hem. Her figure swayed slightly, but when I reached out my
arms to catch her, she gazed straight beyond me, with eyes which had
grown wide and bright from some physical pain.
"George!" she said, "George!" and the name as she uttered it was an
appeal for help.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE BLOW THAT CLEARS
Until dawn the doctor was with her, but in the afternoon, when I went
into her room, I found that she had got out of bed and was dressed for
motoring.
"Oh, I'm all right. There's nothing the matter with me except that I am
smothering for fresh air," she said almost irritably, in reply to my
remonstrances.
"But you are ill, Sally. You are as pale as a ghost."
She shook her head impatiently, and I noticed that the furs she wore
seemed to drag down her slender figure.
"The wind will bring back my colour. If I lie there and think all day, I
shall go out of my mind." Her lips trembled and a quiver passed through
her face, but when I made a step toward her, she repulsed me with a
gesture which, gentle as it was, appeared to place me at a measured
distance. "I wish--oh, I wish Aunt Euphronasia wasn't dead," she said in
a whisper.
"If you go, may I go with you?" I asked.
For a minute she hesitated, then meeting my eyes with a glance in which
I read for the first time since I had known her, a gentle aversion, a
faint hostility, she answered quietly:--
"I am sorry, but I've just telephoned Bonny that I'd call for her."
The old bruise in my heart throbbed while I turned away; but the pain
instead of melting my pride, only increased the terrible reticence which
I wore now as an armour. Her face, above the heavy furs that seemed
dragging her down, had in it something of the soft, uncompromising
obstinacy of Miss Matoaca. So delicate she appeared that I could almost
have broken her body in my grasp; yet I knew that she would not yield
though I brought the full strength of my will to bear in the struggle.
In the old days, doubtless, Matoaca Bland, then in her pride and beauty,
had faced the General with this same firmness which was as soft as
velvet yet as inflexible as steel.
A few days after this, the great man, who had grown at last too feeble
for an active part in "affairs," resigned the presidency of the South
Midland, and retired, as he said, "to enjoy his second childhood."
"It's about time for Theophilus to bring around his box of ants, I
reckon," he observed, and added seriously after a moment, "Yes, there's
no use trying to prop up a fallen tree, Ben. I've had a long life and a
good life, and I am willing to draw out. It's a losing game any way you
play it, when it comes to that. I've thought a lot about it, my boy,
these last weeks, and I tell you the only thing that sticks by you to
the last is the love of a woman. If you need a woman when you are young,
you need her ten thousand times more when you're old. If Miss Matoaca
had married me, we'd both of us have been a long ways better off."
That night I told Sally of the resignation, and repeated to her a part
of the conversation. The sentimental allusion to Miss Matoaca she
treated with scorn, but after a few thoughtful moments she said:--
"You've always wanted to be president of the South Midland more than
anything in the world?"
"More than anything in the world," I admitted absently.
"There's a chance now?"
"Yes, I suppose there's a chance now."
She said nothing more, but the next morning as I was getting into my
overcoat, she sent me word that she wished to speak to me again before I
went out.
"I'll be up in a minute," I answered, and I had turned to follow the
maid up the staircase, when a sharp ring at the telephone distracted my
attention.
"Come down in five minutes if you can," said a voice. "You're wanted
badly about the B. and R. deal."
"Is your mistress ill?" I enquired, turning from the telephone to take
up my overcoat.
"I think not, sir," replied the woman, "she is dressing."
"Then tell her I'm called away, but I will see her at luncheon," I
answered hurriedly, as I rushed out.
Upon reaching my office, I found that my presence was required in
Washington before two o'clock, and as I had not time to return home, I
telephoned Sally for my bag, which she sent down to the station by
Micah, the coachman.
"I hope to return early to-morrow," I said to the negro from the
platform, as the train pulled out.
In my anxiety over the possible collapse of the important B. and R.
deal, the message that Sally had sent me that morning was crowded for
several hours out of my thoughts. When I remembered it later in the
afternoon, I sent her a telegram explaining my absence; and my
conscience, which had troubled me for a moment, was appeased by this
attention that would prove to her that even in the midst of my business
worries I had not forgotten her. There was, indeed, I assured myself, no
cause for the sudden throb of anxiety, almost of apprehension, I had
felt at the recollection of the message that I had disregarded. She had
looked stronger yesterday; I had commented at dinner on the fine flush
in her cheeks; and the pain, which had caused me such sharp distress
while it lasted, had vanished entirely for the last thirty-six hours.
Then the sound of her voice, with its note of appeal, of helplessness,
of terror, when she had called upon George at the reception, returned to
me as if it were spoken audibly somewhere in my brain. I saw her eyes,
wide and bright, as they had been when they looked straight beyond me in
search of help, and her slender, swaying figure in its gown of a pale
sea-foam shade that was stained from bosom to hem with the red streak of
the wine. "Yet there is nothing to worry about," I thought, annoyed
because I could not put this anxiety, this apprehension, out of my mind.
"She is not ill. She is better. Only last night I heard her laughing as
she has not done for weeks."
The afternoon was crowded with meetings, and it was three o'clock the
next day when I reached home and asked eagerly for Sally as I went up
the staircase. She had gone out, her maid informed me, but I would find
a note she had left on my desk in the library. Turning hastily back, I
took up the note from the silver blotter beneath which it was lying, and
as I opened it, I saw that the address looked tremulous and uncertain,
as if it had been written in haste or excitement.
"Dear Ben (it read), I have been in trouble, and as I do not wish
to disturb you at this time, I am going away for a few days to
think it over. I shall be at Riverview, the old place on James
River where mamma and I used to stay--but go ahead with the South
Midland, and don't worry about me, it is all right.
"SALLY."
"I have been in trouble," I repeated slowly. "What trouble, and why
should she keep it from me? Oh, because of the presidency of the South
Midland! Damn the South Midland!" I said suddenly aloud. A time-table
was on my desk, and looking into it, I found that a train left for
Riverview in half an hour. I rang the bell and old Esdras appeared to
announce luncheon.
"I want nothing to eat. Bring me a cup of coffee. I must catch a train
in a few minutes."
"Fur de Lawd's sake, Marse Ben," exclaimed the old negro, "you ain'
never gwineter res' at home agin."
Still grumbling he brought the coffee, and I was standing by the desk
with the cup raised to my lips, when the front door opened and shut
sharply, and the General came into the room, leaning upon two
gold-headed walking-sticks. He looked old and tired, and more than ever,
in his fur-lined overcoat, like a wounded eagle.
"Ben," he said, "what's this Hatty tells me about George taking Sally
out motoring with him yesterday, and not bringing her back? Has there
been an accident?"
My arteries drummed in my ears, and for a minute the noise shut out all
other sounds. Then I heard a carriage roll by in the street, and the
faint regular ticking of the small clock on the mantel.
"Sally is at Riverview," I answered, "I am going down to her on the next
train."
"Then where in the devil is George? He went off with her."
"George may be there, too. I hope he is. She needs somebody with her."
A purple flush rose to the General's face, and the expression in his
small, watery grey eyes held me speechless.
"Confound you, Ben!" he exclaimed, in a burst of temper, "do you mean to
tell me you don't know that George's blamed foolishness is the talk of
the town? Why, he hasn't let Sally out of his sight for the last two
years."
"No, I didn't know it," I replied.
"Great Scott! Where are your wits?"
"In the stock market," I answered bitterly. Then something in me, out of
the chaos and the darkness, rose suddenly, as if with wings, into the
light. "Of course Sally is an angel, General, we both know that--but how
she could have helped seeing that George is the better man of us, I
don't for a minute pretend to understand."
"Well, I never had much opinion of George," responded the General. "It
always seemed to me that he ought to have made a great deal more of
himself than he has done."
"What he has made of himself," I answered, and my voice sounded harsh in
my ears, "is the man that Sally ought to have married."
I went out hurriedly, forgetting to assist him, and limping painfully,
he followed me to the porch, and called after me as I ran down into the
street. Looking back, as I turned the corner, I saw him getting with
difficulty into his buggy, which waited beside the curbing, and it
seemed to me that his great bulky figure, in his fur-lined overcoat, was
unreal and intangible like the images that one sees in sleep.
The train was about to pull out as I entered the station, and swinging
on to the rear coach, I settled myself into the first chair I came to,
which happened to be directly behind the shining bald head and red neck
of a man I knew. As I shrank back, he turned, caught sight of me, and
held out his hand with an easy air of good-fellowship.
"So General Bolingbroke has retired from the South Midland and Atlantic
Railroad, I hear," he remarked. "Well, there's a big job waiting for
somebody, but he'll have to be a big man to fit it."
A sudden ridiculous annoyance took possession of me; the General, the
South Midland Railroad, and the bald-headed man before me, all appeared
to enter my consciousness like small, stinging gnats that swarmed about
larger bodies. What was the railroad to me, if I had lost Sally? Had I
lost her? Was it possible to win her again? "I am in trouble," the words
whirled in my thoughts, "and as I do not wish to disturb you at this
time, I have gone off for a few days to think it over." Was the trouble
associated with George Bolingbroke? Did she mind the gossip? Did she
think I should mind it? Whatever it was, why didn't she come to me and
weep it out on my breast? "I didn't want to disturb you at this time."
At this time? That was because of the South Midland and Atlantic
Railroad. "Damn the South Midland and Atlantic Railroad!" I said again
under my breath.
The red neck of the bald-headed man in front of me suddenly turned.
"Going down for a little hunting?" he enquired genially, "there isn't
much else, I reckon, to take a man like you down into this half-baked
country. I hear the partridges are getting scarce, and they are going to
bring a bill into the Legislature forbidding the sending of them outside
of the state. Now, that's a direct slap, I say, at the small farmer. A
bird is a bird, ain't it, even if it's a Virginia partridge?"
I rose and took up my overcoat. "I'll go into the smoking-car. They keep
it too hot here."
He nodded cheerfully. "I was in there myself, but it's like an oven,
too, so I came out." Then he unfolded his newspaper, and I passed
hurriedly down the aisle of the coach.
In the smoking-car the air was like the fumes in the stemming room of a
tobacco factory, but lighting a cigar, I leaned back on one of the hard,
plush-covered seats, and stared out at the low, pale landscape beyond
the window. It was late November, and the sombre colours of the fields
and of the leafless trees showed through a fine autumnal mist, which
lent an atmosphere of melancholy to the stretches of fallow land, to the
harvested corn-fields, in which the stubble stood in rows, like a
headless army, and to the long red-clay road winding, deep in mud, to
the distant horizon.
"I am in trouble--I am in trouble," I heard always above the roar of the
train, above the shrill whistle of the engine, as it rounded a curve,
above the thin, drawling voices of my fellow-passengers, disputing a
question in politics. "I am in trouble," ran the words. "What trouble?
What trouble? What trouble?" I repeated passionately, while my teeth bit
into my cigar, and the flame went out. "So George hasn't let her out of
his sight for two years, and I did not know it. For two years! And in
these two years how much have I seen of her--of Sally, my wife? We have
been living separate lives under the same roof, and when she asked me
for bread, I have given her--pearls!" A passion of remorse gripped me at
the throat like the spring of a beast. Pearls for bread, and that to
Sally--to my wife, whom I loved! The melancholy landscape at which I
looked appeared to divide and dissolve, and she came back to me, not as
I had last seen her, weighed down by the furs which were too heavy, but
in her blue gingham apron with the jagged burn on her wrist, and the
patient, divine smile hovering about her lips. If she went from me now,
it would be always the Sally of that year of poverty, of suffering, that
I had lost. In the future she would haunt me, not in her sea-green gown,
with the jewels on her bosom, but in her gingham apron with the sleeves
rolled back from her reddened arms and the jagged scar from the burn
disfiguring her flesh.
"I'll see him in hell, before I'll vote for him!" called out a voice at
my back, in a rage.
The train pulled into the little wayside station of Riverview, and
getting out, I started on the walk of two miles through the flat, brown
fields to the house. The road was heavy with mud, and it was like
ploughing to keep straight on in the single red-clay furrow which the
wheels of passing wagons had left. All was desolate, all was deserted,
and the only living things I saw between the station and the house were
a few lonely sheep browsing beside a stream, and the brown-winged birds
that flew, with wet plumage, across the road.
When I reached the ruined gateway of Riverview, the old estate of the
Blands', I quickened my pace, and went rapidly up the long drive to the
front of the house, where I saw the glimmer of red firelight on the
ivied window-panes in the west wing. As I ascended the steps, there was
a sound on the gravel, and George Bolingbroke came around the corner of
the house, in hunting clothes, with a setter dog at his heels.
"Hello, Ben!" he remarked, half angrily. "So you've turned up, have you?
Has there been another panic in the market?"
"Is Sally here?" I asked. "I'm anxious about her."
"Well, it's time you were," he answered. "Yes, she's inside."
He stopped in the centre of the walk, and turning from the door, I came
back and faced him in a silence that seemed alive with the beating of
innumerable wings in the air.
"Something's wrong, George," I said at last, breaking through my
restraint.
He looked at me with a calm, enquiring gaze while I was speaking, and by
that look I understood, in an inspiration, he had condemned me.
"Yes, something's wrong," he answered quietly, "but have you just found
it out?"
"I haven't found it out yet. What is it? What is the matter?"
At the question his calmness deserted him and the dark flush of anger
broke suddenly in his face.
"The matter is, Ben," he replied, holding himself in with an effort,
"that you've missed being a fool only by being a genius instead."
Then turning away, as if his temper had got the better of him, he strode
back through a clump of trees on the lawn, while I went up the steps
again, and crossing the cold hall, entered the dismantled drawing-room,
where a bright log fire was burning.
Sally was sitting on the hearth, half hidden by the high arms of the
chair, and as I closed the door behind me, she rose and stood looking at
me with an expression of surprise. So had Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca
looked in the firelight on that November afternoon when Sally and I had
gone in together.
"Why, Ben!" she said quietly, "I thought you were in Washington!"
"I got home this morning and found your note. Sally, what is the
trouble?"
"You came after me?"
"I came after you. The General went wild and imagined that there had
been an accident, or George had run off with you."
"Then the General sent you?"
"Nobody sent me. I was leaving the house when he found me."
She had not moved toward me, and for some reason, I still stood where I
had stopped short in the centre of the room, kept back by the reserve,
the detachment in her expression.
"You came believing that George and I had gone off together?" she asked,
and there was a faint hostility in her voice.
"Of course I didn't believe it. I'm not a fool if I am an ass. But if I
had believed it," I added passionately, "it would have made no
difference. I'd have come after you if you'd gone off with twenty
Georges."
"Well, there's only one," she said, "and I did go off with him."
"It makes no difference."
"We left Richmond at ten o'clock yesterday, and we've been here ever
since."
"What does that matter?"
"You mean it doesn't matter that I came away with George and spent
twenty-four hours?"
"I mean that nothing matters--not if you'd spent twenty-four years."
"I suppose it doesn't," she responded quietly, and there was a curious
remoteness, a hollowness in the sound of the words. "When one comes to
see things as they are, nothing really matters. It is all just the
same."
Her face looked unsubstantial and wan in the firelight, and so ethereal,
so fleshless, appeared her figure, that it seemed to me I could see
through it to the shining of the flames before which she stood.
"I can't talk, Sally," I said, "I am not good at words, I believe I'm
more than half a fool as George has just told me--but--but--I want
you--I've always wanted you--I've never in my heart wanted anything in
the world but you--"
"I don't suppose even that matters much," she answered wearily, "but if
you care to know, Ben, George and Bonny found me when I was alone
and--and very unhappy, and they brought me with them when they came down
to hunt. They are hunting now."
"You were alone and unhappy?" I said, for George Bolingbroke and Bonny
Marshall had faded from me into the region of utterly indifferent
things.
"It was that I wanted to tell you the morning you couldn't wait," she
returned gently; "I had kept it from you the night before because I saw
that you were so tired and needed sleep. But--but I had seen two
doctors, both had told me that I was ill, that I had some trouble of the
spine, that I might be an invalid--a useless invalid, if I lived,
that--that there would never be another child--that--"
Her voice faltered and ceased, for crossing the room with a bound, I had
gathered her to my breast, and was bending over her in an intensity, a
violence of love, crushing back her hands on her bosom, while I kissed
her face, her throat, her hair, her dress even, as I had never kissed
her in the early days of our marriage. The passion of happiness in that
radiant prime was pale and bloodless beside the passion of sorrow which
shook me now.
"Stop, stop, Ben," she said, struggling to be free, "let me go. You are
hurting me."
"I shall never stop, I shall never let you go," I answered, "I shall
hold you forever, even if it hurts you."
CHAPTER XXXV
THE ULTIMATE CHOICE
We carried her home next day in George's motor car, ploughing with
difficulty over the heavy roads, which in a month's time would have
become impassable. A golden morning had followed the rain; the sun shone
clear, the wind sang in the bronzed tree-tops, and on the low hills to
the right of us, the harvested corn ricks stood out illuminated against
a deep blue sky. When the brown-winged birds flew, as they sometimes
did, across the road, her eyes measured their flight with a look in
which there was none of the radiant impulse I had seen on that afternoon
when she gazed after the flying swallows. She spoke but seldom, and then
it was merely to thank me when I wrapped the fur rug about her, or to
reply to a question of George's with a smile that had in it a touching
helplessness, a pathetic courage. And this helplessness, this courage,
brought to my memory the sound of her voice when she had called George's
name aloud in her terror. Even after we had reached home, and when she
and I stood alone, for a minute, before the fire in her room, I felt
still that something within her--something immaterial and flamelike that
was her soul--turned from me, seeking always a clearer and a diviner
air.
"Are you in pain now, Sally? What can I do for you?" I asked.
"No, I am better. Don't worry," she answered.
Then, because there seemed nothing further to say, I stood in silence,
while she moved from me, as if the burden of her weight was too much for
her, and sank down on the couch, hiding her face in the pillows.
Two days later there came down a great specialist from New York for a
consultation; and while he was upstairs in her closed bedroom, I walked
up and down the floor of the library, over the Turkish rugs, between the
black oak bookcases, as I had walked in that other house on the night of
my failure. How small a thing that seemed to me now compared with this!
What I remembered best from that night was the look in her face when she
had turned and run back to me with her arms outstretched, and the warm,
flattened braid of her hair that had brushed my cheek. I understood at
last, as I walked restlessly back and forth, waiting for the verdict
from the closed room, that I had been happy then--if I had only known
it! The warmth stifled me, and going to the window, I flung it open, and
leaned out into the mild November weather. In the street below leaves
were burning, and while the odour floated up to me I saw again her red
shoes dancing over the sunken graves in the churchyard.
The door opened above, there was the sound of a slow heavy tread on the
staircase, and I went forward to meet the great specialist as he came
into the room.
For a minute he looked at me enquiringly over a pair of black-rimmed
glasses, while I stood there neither thinking nor feeling, but waiting.
Something in my brain, which until then had seemed to tick the slow
movement of time, came suddenly to a stop like a clock that has run
down.
"In my opinion an operation is unnecessary, Mr. Starr," he said, drawing
out his watch as he spoke, "and in your wife's present condition I
seriously advise against it. The injury to the spine may not be
permanent, but there is only one cure for it--time--time and rest. To
make recovery possible she should have absolute quiet, absolute freedom
from care. She must be taken to a milder climate,--I would suggest
southern California,--and she must be kept free from mental disturbance
for a number of years."
"In that case there is hope of recovery?"
For an instant he stared at me blankly, his gaze wandering from his
watch to the clock on the mantel, as if there were a discrepancy in the
time, which he would like to correct.
"Ah, yes, hope," he replied suddenly, in a cheerful voice, "there is
always hope." Then having uttered his confession of faith, he appeared
to grow nervous. "Have you a time-table on your desk?" he enquired. "I'd
like to look up an earlier train than the Florida special."
Having looked up his train, he turned to shake hands with me, while the
abstracted and preoccupied expression in his face grew a trifle more
human, as if he had found what he wanted.
"What your wife needs, my dear sir," he remarked, as he went out, "is
not medical treatment, but daily and hourly care."
A minute later, when the front door had closed after him, and the motor
car had borne him on his way to the station, I stood alone in the room,
repeating his words with a kind of joy, as if they contained the secret
of happiness for which I had sought. "Daily and hourly care, daily and
hourly care." I tried to think clearly of what it meant--of the love,
the sacrifice, the service that would go into it. I tried, too, to think
of her as she was lying now, still and pale in the room upstairs, with
the expression of touching helplessness, of pathetic courage, about her
mouth; but even as I made the effort, the scent of burning leaves
floated again through the window and I could see her only in her red
shoes dancing over the sunken graves. "Daily and hourly care," I
repeated aloud.
The words were still on my lips when old Esdras, stepping softly, came
in and put a telegram into my hands, and as I tore it open, I said over
slowly, like one who impresses a fact on the memory, "What your wife
needs is daily and hourly care." Ah, she should have it. How she should
have it! Then my eyes fell on the paper, and before I read the words, I
knew that it was the offer of the presidency of the Great South Midland
and Atlantic Railroad. The end of my ambition, the great adventure of my
boyhood, lay in my grasp.
With the telegram still in my hand, I went up the staircase, and entered
the bedroom where Sally was lying, with wide, bright eyes, in the
dimness.
"It's good news," I said, as I bent over her, "there's only good news
to-day."
She looked up at me with that searching brightness I had seen when she
gazed straight beyond me for the help that I could not give.
"It means going away from everything I have ever known," she said
slowly; "it means leaving you, Ben."
"It means never leaving me again in your life," I replied; "not for a
day--not for an hour."
"You will go, too?" she asked, and the faint wonder in her face pierced
to my heart.
"Do you think I'd be left?" I demanded.
Her eyes filled and as she turned from me, a tear fell on my hand.
"But your work, your career--oh, no, no, Ben, no."
"You are my career, darling, I have never in my heart had any career but
you. What I am, I am yours, Sally, but there are things that I cannot
give you because they are not mine, because they are not in me. These
are the things that were George's."
Lifting my hand she kissed it gently and let it fall with a gesture that
expressed an acquiescence in life rather than a surrender to love.
"I've sometimes thought that if I hadn't loved you first, Ben--if I
could ever have changed, I should have loved George," she said, and
added very softly, like one who seeks to draw strength from a radiant
memory, "but I had already loved you once for all, I suppose, in the
beginning."
"I am yours, such as I am," I returned. "Plain I shall always be--plain
and rough sometimes, and forgetful to the end of the little things--but
the big things are there as you know, Sally, as you know."
"As I know," she repeated, a little sadly, yet with the pathetic courage
in her voice; "and it is the big things, after all, that I've wanted
most all my life."
Then she shook her head with a smile that brought me to my knees at her
side.
"You've forgotten the railroad," she said. "You've forgotten the
presidency of the South Midland--that's what _you_ wanted most."
My laugh answered her. "Hang the presidency of the South Midland!" I
responded gaily.
Her brows went up, and she looked at me with the shadow of her old
charming archness. By this look I knew that the spirit of the Blands
would fight on, though always with that faint wonder. Then her eyes fell
on the crumpled telegram I still held in my hand, and she reached to
take it.
"What is that, dear?" she asked.
Breaking away from her, I walked to the fireplace and tossed the offer
of the presidency of the South Midland and Atlantic Railroad into the
grate. It caught slowly, and I stood there while it flamed up, and then
crumbled with curled fiery ends among the ashes. When it was quite gone,
I turned and came back to her.
"Only a bit of waste paper," I answered.
Mr. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S NOVELS
The Choir Invisible
"One reads the story for the story's sake, and then re-reads the
book out of pure delight in its beauty. The story is American to
the very core.... Mr. Allen stands to-day in the front rank of
American novelists. _The Choir Invisible_ will solidify a
reputation already established and bring into clear light his rare
gifts as an artist. For this latest story is as genuine a work of
art as has come from an American hand."--Hamilton Mabie in _The
Outlook_.
The Reign of Law. A Tale of the Kentucky Hempfields
"Mr. Allen has a style as original and almost as perfectly finished
as Hawthorne's, and he has also Hawthorne's fondness for spiritual
suggestion that makes all his stories rich in the qualities that
are lacking in so many novels of the period.... If read in the
right way, it cannot fail to add to one's spiritual
possessions."--_San Francisco Chronicle._
The Mettle of the Pasture
"It may be that _The Mettle of the Pasture_ will live and become a
part of our literature; it certainly will live far beyond the
allotted term of present-day fiction. Our principal concern is that
it is a notable novel, that it ranks high in the range of American
and English fiction, and that it is worth the reading, the
re-reading, and the continuous appreciation of those who care for
modern literature at its best."--By E. F. E. in the _Boston
Transcript_.
Summer in Arcady. A Tale of Nature
"This story by James Lane Allen is one of the gems of the season.
It is artistic in its setting, realistic and true to nature and
life in its descriptions, dramatic, pathetic, tragic, in its
incidents; indeed, a veritable masterpiece that must become
classic. It is difficult to give an outline of the story; it is one
of the stories which do not outline; it must be read."--_Boston
Daily Advertiser._
_Shorter Stories_
The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky
Flute and Violin, and Other Kentucky Tales
The Bride of the Mistletoe
A Kentucky Cardinal.
Aftermath. A Sequel to "A Kentucky Cardinal"
Mr. F. MARION CRAWFORD'S NOVELS
Mr. Crawford has no equal as a writer of brilliant cosmopolitan fiction,
in which the characters really belong to the chosen scene and the story
interest is strong. His novels possess atmosphere in a high degree.
Mr. Isaacs (India)
Its scenes are laid in Simla, chiefly. This is the work which first
placed its author among the most brilliant novelists of his day.
Greifenstein (The Black Forest)
"... Another notable contribution to the literature of the day. It
possesses originality in its conception and is a work of unusual
ability. Its interest is sustained to the close, and it is an advance
even on the previous work of this talented author. Like all Mr.
Crawford's work, this novel is crisp, clear, and vigorous, and will be
read with a great deal of interest."--_New York Evening Telegram._
Zoroaster (Persia)
"It is a drama in the force of its situations and in the poetry and
dignity of its language; but its men and women are not men and women of
a play. By the naturalness of their conversation and behavior they seem
to live and lay hold of our human sympathy more than the same characters
on a stage could possibly do."--_The New York Times._
The Witch of Prague (Bohemia)
"_A fantastic tale," illustrated by W. J. Hennessy._
"The artistic skill with which this extraordinary story is constructed
and carried out is admirable and delightful.... Mr. Crawford has scored
a decided triumph, for the interest of the tale is sustained
throughout.... A very remarkable, powerful, and interesting
story."--_New York Tribune._
Paul Patoff (Constantinople)
"Mr. Crawford has a marked talent for assimilating local color, not to
make mention of a broader historical sense. Even though he may adopt, as
it is the romancer's right to do, the extreme romantic view of history,
it is always a living and moving picture that he evolves for us, varied
and stirring."--_New York Evening Post._
Marietta (Venice)
"No living writer can surpass Mr. Crawford in the construction of a
complicated plot and the skilful unravelling of the tangled
skein."--_Chicago Record-Herald._
"He has gone back to the field of his earlier triumphs, and has,
perhaps, scored the greatest triumph of them all."--_New York Herald._
THE SARACINESCA SERIES
Saracinesca
"The work has two distinct merits, either of which would serve to make
it great,--that of telling a perfect story in a perfect way, and of
giving a graphic picture of Roman society in the last days of the Pope's
temporal power.... The story is exquisitely told."--_Boston Traveler._
Sant' Ilario. A Sequel to "Saracinesca"
"A singularly powerful and beautiful story.... It fulfils every
requirement of artistic fiction. It brings out what is most impressive
in human action, without owing any of its effectiveness to
sensationalism or artifice. It is natural, fluent in evolution,
accordant with experience, graphic in description, penetrating in
analysis, and absorbing in interest."--_New York Tribune._
Don Orsino. A Sequel to "Sant' Ilario"
"Perhaps the cleverest novel of the year.... There is not a dull
paragraph in the book, and the reader may be assured that once begun,
the story of _Don Orsino_ will fascinate him until its close."--_The
Critic._
Taquisara
"To Mr. Crawford's Roman novels belongs the supreme quality of uniting
subtly drawn characters to a plot of uncommon interest."--_Chicago
Tribune._
Corleone
"Mr. Crawford is the novelist born ... a natural story-teller, with wit,
imagination, and insight added to a varied and profound knowledge of
social life."--_The Inter-Ocean_, Chicago.
Casa Braccio. _In two volumes, $2.00._ Illustrated by A. Castaigne.
"Mr. Crawford's books have life, pathos, and insight; he tells a
dramatic story with many exquisite touches."--_New York Sun._
The White Sister
NOVELS OF ROMAN SOCIAL LIFE
A Roman Singer
"One of the earliest and best works of this famous novelist.... None but
a genuine artist could have made so true a picture of human life,
crossed by human passions and interwoven with human weakness. It is a
perfect specimen of literary art."--_The Newark Advertiser._
Marzio's Crucifix
"We have repeatedly had occasion to say that Mr. Crawford possesses in
an extraordinary degree the art of constructing a story. It is as if it
could not have been written otherwise, so naturally does the story
unfold itself, and so logical and consistent is the sequence of incident
after incident. As a story, _Marzio's Crucifix_ is perfectly
constructed."--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
Heart of Rome. A Tale of the Lost Water
"Mr. Crawford has written a story of absorbing interest, a story with a
genuine thrill in it; he has drawn his characters with a sure and
brilliant touch, and he has said many things surpassingly well."--_New
York Times Saturday Review._
Cecilia. A Story of Modern Rome
"That F. Marion Crawford is a master of mystery needs no new telling....
His latest novel, _Cecilia_, is as weird as anything he has done since
the memorable _Mr. Isaacs_.... A strong, interesting, dramatic story,
with the picturesque Roman setting beautifully handled as only a
master's touch could do it."--_Philadelphia Evening Telegraph._
Whosoever Shall Offend
"It is a story sustained from beginning to end by an ever increasing
dramatic quality."--_New York Evening Post._
Pietro Ghisleri
"The imaginative richness, the marvellous ingenuity of plot, the power
and subtlety of the portrayal of character, the charm of the romantic
environment,--the entire atmosphere, indeed,--rank this novel at once
among the great creations."--_The Boston Budget._
To Leeward
"The four characters with whose fortunes this novel deals are, perhaps,
the most brilliantly executed portraits in the whole of Mr. Crawford's
long picture gallery, while for subtle insight into the springs of human
passion and for swift dramatic action none of the novels surpasses this
one."--_The News and Courier._
A Lady of Rome
Via Crucis. A Romance of the Second Crusade.
"_Via Crucis...._ A tale of former days, possessing an air of reality
and an absorbing interest such as few writers since Scott have been able
to accomplish when dealing with historical characters."--_Boston
Transcript._
In the Palace of the King (Spain)
"_In the Palace of the King_ is a masterpiece; there is a
picturesqueness, a sincerity which will catch all readers in an
agreeable storm of emotion, and even leave a hardened reviewer impressed
and delighted."--_Literature_, London.
With the Immortals
"The strange central idea of the story could have occurred only to a
writer whose mind was very sensitive to the current of modern thought
and progress, while its execution, the setting it forth in proper
literary clothing, could be successfully attempted only by one whose
active literary ability should be fully equalled by his power of
assimilative knowledge both literary and scientific, and no less by his
courage and capacity for hard work. The book will be found to have a
fascination entirely new for the habitual reader of novels. Indeed, Mr.
Crawford has succeeded in taking his readers quite above the ordinary
plane of novel interest."--_Boston Advertiser._
Children of the King (Calabria)
"One of the most artistic and exquisitely finished pieces of work that
Crawford has produced. The picturesque setting, Calabria and its
surroundings, the beautiful Sorrento and the Gulf of Salerno, with the
bewitching accessories that climate, sea, and sky afford, give Mr.
Crawford rich opportunities to show his rare descriptive powers. As a
whole the book is strong and beautiful through its simplicity, and ranks
among the choicest of the author's many fine productions."--_Public
Opinion._
A Cigarette Maker's Romance (Munich)
and Khaled, a Tale of Arabia
"Two gems of subtle analysis of human passion and motive."--_Times._
"The interest is unflagging throughout. Never has Mr. Crawford done more
brilliant realistic work than here. But his realism is only the case and
cover for those intense feelings which, placed under no matter what
humble conditions, produce the most dramatic and the most tragic
situations.... This is a secret of genius, to take the most coarse and
common material, the meanest surroundings, the most sordid material
prospects, and out of the vehement passions which sometimes dominate all
human beings to build up with these poor elements, scenes and passages
the dramatic and emotional power of which at once enforce attention and
awaken the profoundest interest."--_New York Tribune._
Arethusa (Constantinople)
Dr. Cooper, in _The Bookman_, once gave to Mr. Crawford the title which
best marks his place in modern fiction: "the prince of storytellers."
A Tale of a Lonely Parish
"It is a pleasure to have anything so perfect of its kind as this brief
and vivid story.... It is doubly a success, being full of human
sympathy, as well as thoroughly artistic in its nice balancing of the
unusual with the commonplace, the clever juxtaposition of innocence and
guilt, comedy and tragedy, simplicity and intrigue."--_Critic._
Dr. Claudius. A True Story
The scene changes from Heidelberg to New York, and much of the story
develops during the ocean voyage.
"There is a satisfying quality in Mr. Crawford's strong, vital, forceful
stories."--_Boston Herald._
An American Politician. The scenes are laid in Boston
"It need scarcely be said that the story is skilfully and picturesquely
written, portraying sharply individual characters in well-defined
surroundings."--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
The Three Fates
"Mr. Crawford has manifestly brought his best qualities as a student of
human nature and his finest resources as a master of an original and
picturesque style to bear upon this story. Taken for all in all, it is
one of the most pleasing of all his productions in fiction, and it
affords a view of certain phases of American, or perhaps we should say
of New York, life that have not hitherto been treated with anything like
the same adequacy and felicity."--_Boston Beacon._
Marion Darche
"Full enough of incident to have furnished material for three or four
stories.... A most interesting and engrossing book. Every page unfolds
new possibilities, and the incidents multiply rapidly."--_Detroit Free
Press._
"We are disposed to rank _Marion Darche_ as the best of Mr. Crawford's
American stories."--_The Literary World._
Katharine Lauderdale
The Ralstons. A Sequel to "Katharine Lauderdale"
"Mr. Crawford at his best is a great novelist, and in _Katharine
Lauderdale_ we have him at his best."--_Boston Daily Advertiser._
"A most admirable novel, excellent in style, flashing with humor, and
full of the ripest and wisest reflections upon men and women."--_The
Westminster Gazette._
"It is the first time, we think, in American fiction that any such
breadth of view has shown itself in the study of our social
framework."--_Life._
End of Project Gutenberg's The Romance of a Plain Man, by Ellen Glasgow
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