The Romance of a Plain Man
Page 20
CHAPTER XX
IN WHICH SOCIETY RECEIVES US
It was a bright December evening when we returned to Richmond, and drovethrough 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 stonesteps several girl friends of Sally's were waiting to receive us. Beyondthem, in the brilliantly lighted hall, I saw masses of palms and rosesunder the oak staircase.
"Oh, you bad Sally, not even to ask us to your wedding. And you know howwe adore one!" cried a handsome, dark girl in a riding habit, namedBonny Page. "How do you do, Mr. Starr? We're to call you 'Ben' nowbecause you've married our cousin."
I made some brief response, and while I spoke, I felt again the oldsense of embarrassment, of strangeness in my surroundings, that alwayscame upon me in a gathering of women--especially of girls. With Sally Inever forgot that I was a strong man,--with Bonny Page I remembered onlythat 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 ofmischief,--and beside the spirit of mischief I felt decidedly heavy. Shewas a tall, splendid girl, with a beautiful figure,--the belle ofRichmond and the best horsewoman of the state. I had seen her take ajump that had brought my heart to my throat, and come down on the otherside with a laugh. A little dazzling, a little cold, fine, quick,generous to her friends, and merciless to her lovers, I had wonderedoften what subtle sympathy had knit Sally and herself so closelytogether.
"You'd always promised that I should be your bridesmaid," she remarkedreproachfully; "she's hurt us dreadfully, hasn't she, Bessy? And it'svery forgiving of us to warm her house and have her dinner ready forher."
Bessy, the little heroine of the azalea wreath and my first party,murmured shyly that she hoped the furniture was placed right and thatthe dinner would be good.
"Oh, you darlings, it's too sweet of you!" said Sally, entering thedrawing-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 comingkept me from having even you? How is she, Bonny? O Bonny, she won'tspeak to me."
Immediately she was clasped in Bonny's arms, where she shed a few tearson Bonny's handsome shoulder.
"She'll grow used to it," said little Bessy; "but, Sally, how did youhave 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 houselooks! Here are all the bridal roses that I missed and you'veremembered."
"There're blue roses in your room," said Bonny; "I mean on the chintzand on the paper."
"How can I help being happy, when I have blue roses, Bonny? Aren't blueroses an emblem of the impossible achieved?"
Bonny's dancing black eyes were on me, and I read in them plainly thethought, "Yes, I'm going to be nice to you because Sally has marriedyou, and Sally's my cousin--even if I can't understand how she came todo it."
No, she couldn't understand, and she never would, this I read also. Theman 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 goodmuscle and sinew, with an honest eye, doubtless, and clean hands, butlacking in the finer qualities of person and manner that must appeal toher taste. Where Sally beheld power, and admired, Bonny Page saw onlyroughness, and wondered.
Presently, they led her away, and I heard their merry voices floatingdown from the bedrooms above. The pink light of the candles on thedinner 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 growfaint and distant, for I was very tired with the fatigue of a man whosemuscles are cramped from want of exercise. I felt all at once that I hadstepped from the open world into a place that was too small for me. Iwas a rich man at last, I was the husband, too, of the princess of theenchanted garden, and yet in the midst of the perfume and the softlights and the laughter floating down from above, I saw myself, by somefreak of memory, as I had crouched homeless in the straw under adeserted stall in the Old Market. Would the thought of the boy I hadbeen haunt forever the man I had become? Did my past add a keenerhappiness to my present, or hang always like a threatening shadow aboveit? 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 couldthey or she comprehend hunger, who had never gone without for a moment?Or sympathise with the lust of battle when they had never encountered anobstacle? Already I heard the call of the streets, and my bloodresponded to it in the midst of the scented atmosphere. These thingswere for Sally, but for me was the joy of the struggle, the passion toachieve that I might return, with my spoils and pile them higher andhigher before her feet. The grasping was what I loved, not thepossession; the instant of triumph, not the fruits of the conquest. Lovethrobbed in my heart, but my mind, as if freeing itself from arestraint, followed the Great South Midland and Atlantic, covering thatnight under the stars nearly twenty thousand miles of road. Theelemental man in me chafed under the social curb, and I longed at thatinstant to bear the woman I had won out into the rough joys of theworld. My muscles would soon grow flabby in this scented warmth. Thefighter would war with the dreamer, and I would regret the short, fiercebattle with my competitors in the business of life.
A slight sound made me turn, and I saw Bonny Page standing alone in thedoorway, and looking straight at me with her dancing eyes.
"I don't know you yet, Ben," she said in the direct, gallant manner of aperfect 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 forSally'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 nexttime 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 evermarried, 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 watchedme, partly to ease the embarrassment which her exquisite social instincthad at once discerned. She was charming, friendly, almost affectionate,yet I was conscious all the time that, in spite of herself, she was alittle critical, a trifle aloof. Her perfect grooming, the very finenessof her self-possession, her high-bred gallantry of manner, and even theshining gloss on her black, beribboned hair, and her high boots,produced in me a sense of remoteness, which I found it impossiblealtogether to overcome.
In a little while there was a flutter on the staircase, and the othergirls trooped down, with Sally in their midst. She had changed hertravelling dress for a gown of white, cut low at the neck, and about herthroat 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 haddone that day, in her red shoes, in Saint John's churchyard.
When I came downstairs from my dressing-room, I found that the girls hadgone, and she was standing by the dinner table, with her face bent downover the vase of pink roses in the centre.
"So we are in our own home, darling, at last," I said, and a few minuteslater, as I looked across the pink candle shades and the roses, and sawher sitting opposite to me, I told myself that at last both the fighterin me and the dreamer had found the fulfilment of their desire.
After dinner, when I had had my smoke in the library, we caught handsand wandered like two children over the new house--into th
e pink andwhite guest room, and then into Sally's bedroom, where the blue rosessprawled over the chintz-covered furniture and the silk curtains. Aglass door gave on a tiny balcony, and throwing a shawl about her headand her bare shoulders, she went with me out into the frosty Decembernight, where a cold bright moon was riding high above the churchsteeples. With my arm about her, and her head on my breast, we stood insilence gazing over the city, while the sense of her nearness, of herthrobbing 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--nopain, no sorrow, no disappointment. Why doesn't everybody love, Iwonder?"
"Everybody hasn't you."
"I'm so sorry for poor Aunt Mitty,--she never loved,--and for poor AuntMatoaca, 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 thebackground of my thoughts pushing that wheel up the hill."
"That won you. And to think if I'd known you were there, Sally, Icouldn't have done it."
"That, too, is why I love you, so there's another reason! Itisn't only your strength, Ben, it is, I believe, still more yourself-forgetfulness. Then you forgot yourself because you thought of thepoor 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? Youwould have marched all the way to the Capitol just like that, and Idon't believe you would ever have known that it looked ridiculous orthat 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 wonderedwhy!"
"Can you guess why I loved you?" I asked. "Was it for your red shoes? Orfor that tiny scar like a dimple I've always adored?"
"I never told you what made that," she said, after a moment. "I was avery little baby when my father got angry with mamma one day--he hadbeen 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 beento her old home to see Miss Mitty.
"I couldn't stand the thought of her loneliness, so I went into thedrawing-room at the hour I knew she would be tending her sweet alyssumand 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 shedidn't ask me a single question--only spoke of the weather and herflower 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 allday. Did you ever see such a profusion? They are all calling, too,--theFitzhughs, 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 tonechanged. "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 tothe heart.
"I'd like you to see Jessy--she's pretty enough to look at--but I didn'tmean you to marry my family, you know."
"I know you didn't, dear, but I've married everything of yours all thesame. If you can spare a few minutes after luncheon, we'll drive downand speak to her."
I could spare the few minutes, and when the carriage was ready, she camedown in her hat and furs, and we went at a merry pace down FranklinStreet to the boarding-house in which Jessy was living. As we drove upto the pavement, the door of the house opened and my little sister cameout, dressed for walking and looking unusually pretty.
"Why, Ben, she's a beauty!" said Sally, in a whisper, as the girlapproached us. To me Jessy's face had always appeared too cold andvacant for beauty, in spite of her perfect features and the brilliantfairness of her complexion. Even now I missed the glow of feeling or ofanimation 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 andstay 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, andunder her big black hat her blond hair rolled in natural waves from herforehead.
"Are you happy here, Jessy?" I asked.
"They are very kind to me. There's an old gentleman boarding here nowfrom the West. He is going to give us a theatre party to-night. They sayhe has millions." For the first time the glow of enthusiasm shone in herlimpid blue eyes.
"A good use to make of his millions," I laughed. "Do you hear often fromPresident, Jessy?"
The glow faded from her eyes and they grew cold again. "He writes suchbad letters," she answered, "I can hardly read them."
"Never forget," I answered sternly, "that he denied himself an educationin order that you might become what you are."
While I spoke the door of the house opened again, and the old gentlemanshe had alluded to came gingerly down the steps. He had a small, wizenedface, and he wore a fur-lined overcoat, in which it was evident that hestill suffered from the cold.
"This is my brother and my sister, Mr. Cottrel," said Jessy, as he cameslowly toward us.
He bowed with a pompous manner, and stood twirling the chain of hiseye-glasses. "Yes, yes, I have heard of your brother. His name is wellknown already," he answered. "I congratulate, sir," he added, "not the'man who got rich quickly,' as I've heard you called, but the fortunatebrother 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 littlesister. 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 lookabout her like one of Perugino's saints."
Then the carriage stopped at the office, and I returned, with a highheart, to the game.