The Romance of a Plain Man

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

  CHAPTER XXIX

  IN WHICH WE RECEIVE VISITORS

  I was still sitting there, with my head propped in my hands, when myeyes, which had seen nothing before, saw Sally coming through the hotdust in the street, with George Bolingbroke, carrying a bundle under hisarm, at her side. As she neared me a perplexed and anxious look--thelook I had seen always on the face of my mother when the day's burdenwas heavy--succeeded the smiling brightness with which she had beenspeaking to George.

  "Why, Ben!" she exclaimed, quickening her steps, "what are you doing outhere 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 thebundle and help him up."

  "He deserves to be left here," remarked George, laughing good-humouredlyas he grasped my arm, and half led, half dragged me up the steps andinto the house. Then, when I was placed in the deep chintz-covered chairby the window, Sally came in with a milk punch, which she held to mylips while I drank.

  "You're really very foolish, Ben."

  "I know all, Sally," I replied, sitting up and pushing the glass and herhand 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 sawthe sign," she pursued quietly, when I had swallowed the punch; "Georgesaw 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 towant to lend me his money. You see, the way of it was that when you fellill, and there wasn't a penny in the house, I remembered how bitterlyyou'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 tosit down and think hard for an hour, and at the end of that time, whenyou were well enough to be left, I got on the car and went over to seeseveral women, who, I knew, were so rich that they had plenty of oldlace and embroidery. I told them exactly how it was and, of course, theyall wanted to give me money, and Jennie Randolph even sat down and criedwhen I wouldn't take it. Then they agreed to let me launder all theirfine lace and embroidered blouses, and I've made desserts and cakes forsome of them and--and--"

  "Don't go on, Sally, I can't stand it. I'm a crackbrained fool and I'mgoing to cry."

  "Of course, the worst part was having to leave you, but when Georgefound out about it, he insisted upon fetching and carrying my bundles."

  "George!" I exclaimed sharply, and a spasm of pain, like the entrance ofpoison into an unhealed wound, contracted my heart. "Was that confoundedpackage under his arm," I questioned, almost angrily, "some of thestuff?"

  "That was a blouse of Maggie Tyler's. He is going to take it back to heron Friday. There, now, stay quiet, while I run and speak to him. He iswaiting for me in the kitchen."

  She went out, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for herto take in washing and for George to deliver it, while, opening the longgreen shutters, I sat staring, beyond the humming-birds and the whitecolumns, to the shimmering haze that hung over the old tea-roses and thedwindled box in the garden. Here the heat, though it was still visibleto the eyes, was softened and made fragrant by the greenness of thetrees and the grass and by the perfume of the jessamine and the oldtea-roses, dropping their faintly coloured leaves in the sunshine. Fromtime to time the sounds of the city, grown melancholy and discordant,like the sounds that one hears in fever, reached me across theshimmering vagueness of the garden.

  And then as I sat there, with folded hands, there came to me, out ofsome place, so remote that it seemed a thousand miles away from thesunny stillness, and yet so near that I knew it existed only within mysoul, a sense of failure, of helplessness, of humiliation. A hundredcasual memories thronged through my mind, and all these memories,gathering significance from my imagination, plunged me deeper into thebitter despondency which had closed over my head. I saw the General,with his little, alert bloodshot eyes, like the eyes of an intelligentbulldog, with that look of stubbornness, of tenacity, persisting beneaththe sly humour that gleamed in his face, as if he were thinking alwayssomewhere far back in his brain, "I'll hang on to the death, I'll hangon to the death." His figure, which, because of that legendary glamour Ihad seen surrounding it in childhood, still personified shining successin my eyes, appeared to add a certain horror to this sense ofhelplessness, of failure, that dragged me under. Deep down within me,down below my love for Sally or for the child, something older than anyemotion, older than any instinct except the instinct of battle, awakenedand passed from passiveness into violence. "Let me but start again inthe race," said this something, "let me but stand once more on my feet."The despondency, which had been at first formless and vague as meredarkness, leaped suddenly into a tangible shape, and I felt that theoppressive weight of the debt on my shoulders was the weight, not ofthought, but of metal. Until that was lifted--until I had struggledfree--I should be crippled, I told myself, not only in ambition, but inbody.

  From the detached kitchen, at the end of the short brick walk, overgrownwith wild violets, that led to it, the sound of George's laugh fell onmy ears. Rising to my feet with an effort, I stood, listening, withoutthought, to the sound, which seemed to grow vacant and sad as it floatedto me in the warm air over the sunken bricks. Then passing through thelong window, I descended the steps slowly, and stopped in the shadow ofa pink crape myrtle that grew near the kitchen doorway. Again themerriment 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 sparklingvoice, 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 hadjust rinsed in the tub still in her hands.

  "Why, here's Ben!" she exclaimed. "You bad boy, when I told youpositively not to get up out of that chair!"

  A gingham apron was pinned over her waist and bosom, her sleeves wererolled back, and I saw the redness from the hot soapsuds rising from herhands to her elbows.

  "For God's sake, Sally, what are you doing?" I demanded, and reachingout, as I swayed slightly, I caught the lintel of the door for support.

  "I'm washing and George is splitting kindling wood," she repliedcheerfully, shaking out the white, filmy stuff with an upward movementof her bare arms; "the boy who splits the wood never came--I think heate too many currants yesterday--and if George hadn't offered hisservices as man of all work, I dread to think what you and AuntEuphronasia would have eaten for supper."

  "It's first-rate work for the muscles, Ben," remarked George, flingingan armful of wood on the brick floor, and kneeling beside the stove tokindle a fire in the old ashes. "I haven't a doubt but it's better forthe back and arms than horseback riding. All the same," he added, pokingvigorously at the smouldering embers, "I'm going to wallop that boy assoon as I've got this fire started."

  "You won't have time to do that until you've delivered the day'swashing," rejoined Sally, with merriment.

  "Yes, I shall. I'll stop on my way--that boy comes first," returnedGeorge with a grim, if humorous, determination.

  This humour, this lightness, and above all this gallantry, which was somuch a part of the older civilisation to which they belonged, wroughtupon my disordered nerves with a feeling of anger. Here, at last, I hadrun against that "something else" of the Blands', apart from wealth,apart from position, apart even from blood, of which the General hadspoken. 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, herterrible importance.

  "You know I don't care a bit what I eat, Sally!" I blurted out, in atemper.

  "Well, you may not, dear, but George and I do," she rejoined, pinningthe white stuff on a clothes-line s
he had stretched between the door andthe window, "we are both interested, you see, in getting you back towork. There's the door-bell, George. You may wash your hands at the sinkand 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 outalong the brick walk to the house, while I stood in the doorway, underthe 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 havemarried George."

  With her arms still upraised to the clothes-line, she looked round at meover her shoulder.

  "He is useful in an emergency," she admitted; "but, after all, theemergency 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 footmanin livery, that the callers were Dr. Theophilus and the General, whoawaited us in the sitting-room.

  "There's no hurry, Sally," he added; "they started over to condole withyou, I imagine, but they've both become so absorbed in discussing thisneighbourhood as it was fifty years ago, that I honestly believe they'veentirely forgotten that you live here."

  "Well, we'll have to remind them," said Sally, with a laugh; and whenshe had rolled down her sleeves and tidied her hair before the crackedmirror on the wall, we went back to the house, where we found the twoold men engaged in a violent controversy over the departed inhabitantsof Church Hill.

  "I tell you, Theophilus, it wasn't Robert Carrington, but his brotherBushrod 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 whoforever clinches an argument, "I can take you this minute straight overthere to his grave in Saint John's Churchyard. How are you, Ben, glad tosee you up," he observed in an absent-minded manner. "Have you got apalm-leaf fan around, Sally? I can't get through these swelteringafternoons without a fan. What do you think Theophilus is arguing aboutnow? He is trying to prove to me that it was Robert Carrington, notBushrod, who lived in that big house at the top of the hill. Why, I tellyou 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 awhimpering child, and fanning himself with short, excited movements ofthe palm-leaf fan. His determined, mottled face was covered thickly withfine drops of perspiration.

  "I knew Robert very intimately," remarked the doctor, in a peaceablevoice. "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--Iattended him in his last illness--that he would do it over again if hehad 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 knewwhat was coming next till she died.'"

  "Robert was a fool," commented the General, brusquely, "a longwhite-livered, studious fellow that dragged around at his wife's apronstrings. Couldn't hold a candle to his brother Bushrod. When I was aboy, Bushrod Carrington--he was nearer my father's age than mine--wasthe greatest dandy and duellist in the state. Got all his clothes inParis, and I can see him now, as plainly as if it were yesterday, whenhe used to come to church in a peachblow brocade waistcoat of a foreignfashion, and his hair shining with pomatum. Yes, he was a greatduellist--that was the age of duels. Shot a man the first year he cameback from France, didn't he?"

  "A sad scamp, but a good husband," remarked the doctor, ignoring theincident of the duel. "I remember when his first child was born, he wason his knees praying the whole time, and then when it was over he wentout and got as drunk as a lord. 'Where's Bushrod?' were the first wordshis 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 forNed Peyton, he married Bessy Tucker. They used to say that when hecouldn't get one Bessy, he took the other. Yes, he made a devotedhusband, never a wild oat to sow after his marriage. I remember when Icalled on him once, when he was living in that big house there on top ofthe hill--"

  "I think you're wrong about that, George. I am sure it was Robert wholived there. When I attended him in his last illness--"

  "I reckon I know where Bushrod Carrington lived, Theophilus. I've beenthere often enough. The house you're talking about is over on the otherside of the hill, and was built by Robert."

  "Well, I'm perfectly positive, George, that when I attended Robert inhis last illness--"

  "His last illness be hanged! I tell you what, Theophilus, you're gettingentirely 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 oficed water you can give Theophilus, Sally?"

  "I'll get it," said young George, as Sally rose, and when he had goneout in response to her nod, the General, cooling a little, glanced witha sly wink from Sally to me. "You put me in mind of Bushrod's firstflame, Bessy Randolph, my dear," he observed; "she was a great belle andbeauty 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 ahanger-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 observedrightly, 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 yourstrength, and be sure to take your egg-nog three times a day. Comealong, George, and we'll look up Robert's and Bushrod's graves in thechurchyard. You'd better bring the palm-leaf fan, you'll probably needit."

  They descended the curving steps leisurely, the General clinging to therailing on one side, and supported by George on the other. Then, atlast, after many protestations of sympathy, and not a few anecdotesforgotten until the instant of departure revived the memory, the oldgrey horse, deciding suddenly that it was time for oats and the coolstable, started of his own accord up the street toward the churchyard.As the buggy passed out of sight, with the palm-leaf fan wavingfrantically when it turned the corner, George came up the steps again,and going indoors, brought out the little bundle of lace that he was todeliver to its owner on his way home.

  "Keep up your pluck, Ben," he said cheerfully; and turning away, helooked 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. "Isthere anything else? I'll be over to-morrow as soon as I can get offfrom the office."

  "Nothing else," she replied; then, as he was moving away, she leanedforward, with that bloom and softness in her look which always came toher in moments when she was deeply stirred. "George!" she called, in alow voice, "George!"

  He stopped and came back, meeting her vivid face with eyes that grewsuddenly dark and gentle.

  "It's just to say that I don't know what in the world I should have donewithout you," she said.

  Again he turned from her, and this time he went quickly, without lookingback, along the dusty street in the direction of the car line beyond thecorner.

  "You've been up too long, Ben, and you're as white as a sheet," saidSally, putting her hand on my arm. "Come, now, and lie down again whileAunt Euphronasia is cooking supper. I must iron Maggie Tyler's blouse assoon as it is dry."

  The mention of Maggie Tyler's blouse was all I needed to precipitate meinto the abyss above which I had stood. Too miserable to offer uselesscomment upon so obvious a tragedy, I followed her in silence back to thebedroom, where she placed me on the bed and flung a soft, thin coverletover my prostrate body. She was still standing beside me, when AuntEuphronasia hobbled excitedly into the room, and looking across thethreshold, I discerned a tall, slender figure, s
hrouded heavily inblack, hovering in the dim hall beyond.

  "Hi! hi! honey, hyer's Miss Mitty done come ter see you!" exclaimed AuntEuphronasia, in a burst of ecstasy.

  Sally turned with a cry, and the next instant she was clasped in MissMitty's arms, with her head hidden in the rustling crape on the oldlady's shoulder.

  "I've just heard that you were in trouble, and that your husband wasill," said Miss Mitty, when she had seated herself in the chair by thewindow; "I came over at once, though I hadn't left the house for a yearexcept 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 verybadly, 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 wayabout my illness, the nature of the fever, and the pain from which I hadsuffered.

  "I hope you had the proper food, Ben," she said, calling me for thefirst time by my name; "I am sorry that I could not supply you with mychicken jelly. Dr. Theophilus tells me he considers it superior to anyhe has ever tried.--even to Mrs. Clay's."

  "Comfort Sally, Miss Mitty, and it will do me more good than chickenjelly."

  For a minute she sat looking at me kindly in silence. Then, as littleBenjamin was brought, she took him upon her lap, and remarked that hewas a beautiful baby, and that she already discerned in him the look ofher 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 bendover 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 atleast Sally and the baby should accept the offer.

  "There is a basket of old port in the sitting-room; I thought it mighthelp to strengthen you," were her last words as she passed out, withSally clinging to her arm, and the crape veil she still wore for MissMatoaca rustling as she moved.

  "Po' Miss Mitty has done breck so I 'ouldn't hev knowed her f'om dedaid," observed Aunt Euphronasia, when the front door had closed and thesound of rapidly rolling wheels had passed down the street.

  All night Sally and I talked of her, she resisting and I entreating thatshe 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 aretwo things that are killing me, Sally--the fact of owing money that Ican't pay, and the thought of your toiling like a slave over mycomfort."

  "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 Idid."

  "I don't see either," I admitted honestly, looking at her, as she stoodin the frame of the long window, the ruffles of her muslin dressing-gownblowing gently in the breeze which had sprung up in the garden. Beyondher there was a pale dimness, and the fresh, moist smell of the dew onthe grass.

  What she had said was the truth. How could I have lived through thesummer if she had left me? Since the night after my failure, when we hadcome, for the first time, face to face with each other, I had leaned onher with all the weight of my crippled strength; and this weight,instead of crushing her to the earth, appeared to add vigour andbuoyancy to her slender figure. Long afterwards, when my knowledge ofher had come at last, not through love, but through bitterness, Iwondered why I had not understood on that night, while I lay therewatching her pale outline framed by the window. Love, not meat anddrink, was her nourishment, and without love, though I were to surroundher with all the fruits of the earth, she would still be famished. Thatshe was strong, I had already learned. What I was still to discover wasthat this strength lay less in character than in emotion. Her veryendurance--her power of sustained sympathy, of sacrifice--had its birthin some strangely idealised quality of passion--as though even sufferingor duty was enkindled by this warm, clear flame that burned alwayswithin 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 wrapperand answered it, she came back very slowly, holding an open note in herhands.

  "Oh, poor Aunt Mitty, poor Aunt Mitty. She died all alone in her houselast 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 helpbelieving that it killed her. She had Aunt Matoaca's heart trouble, andthe strain was too much." Then, as I held out my arms, she clung to me,weeping. "Never leave me alone, Ben--whatever happens, never, neverleave me alone!"

  * * * * *

  A few days later, when Miss Mitty's will was opened, it was found thatshe had left to Sally her little savings of the last few years, whichamounted to ten thousand dollars. The house, with her income, passedfrom her to the hospital endowed by Edmond Bland in a fit of rage withhis youngest daughter; and the old lady's canary and the cheque, whichfluttered some weeks later from the lawyer's letter, were the onlypossessions 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 atthe end. Did you ever notice my miniature, framed in pearls, that shewore sometimes, in place of grandmama's, at her throat?"

  I had not noticed it, and the fact that I had never seen it, and wasperfectly unaware whether or not it resembled Sally, seemed in somecurious way to increase, rather than to diminish, the jealous pain at myheart. Why should George have been given this trifle, which wasassociated 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 slippedthe paper into my pocket.

  An hour later, as I passed in the car down the long hill, I told myselfthat I would place the money to Sally's account, in order that she mightdraw on it until I had made good the strain of my illness. My firstintention had been to go into the bank on my way to the office; butglancing at my watch as I left the car, I found that it was alreadyafter nine o'clock, and so returning the cheque to my pocket, I crossedthe street, where I found the devil of temptation awaiting me in theperson of Sam Brackett.

  "I say, Ben, if you had a little cash, here's an opportunity to makeyour fortune rise," he remarked; "I've just given George a tip and he'sgoing in."

  "You'd better keep out of it, Ben," said George, wheeling round suddenlyafter he had nodded and turned away. "It's copper, and you know ifthere's a thing on earth that can begin to monkey when you don't expectit to, it's the copper trade."

  "Bonanza copper mining stock is selling at zero again," commented Samimperturbably, "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 melittle; but while I stood there on the crowded pavement, with my eyes onthe sky, I had a sudden sensation, as if the burden of debt--which wasthe burden, not of thought, but of metal--had been removed from myshoulders. 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 myhead. I saw stretching away from me the dull years I must spend inchains, but I saw, also, in the blessed vision which Sam Brackett hadcalled 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, whetherit's a good thing or not, if that's Miss Mitty's legacy, you oughtn't tospeculate 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 itwould 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 tenthousand dollars in the Bonanza copper mining stock is a rational way ofdoing it."

  "Such things aren't done in a rational way. The secret of successfulspeculating is to be willing to dare everything for something. Sam's gotfaith in the Bonanza, and he knows a hundred times as much about it asyou 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 thetangible weight on my shoulders of the two hundred thousand dollars Iowed. The old prostrate instinct of the speculator, which is but thegambler'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.