The Romance of a Plain Man

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

  CHAPTER XXX

  IN WHICH SALLY PLANS

  My first sensation after putting Sally's ten thousand dollars intocopper mining stock was one of immense relief, almost of exhilaration,as if I already heard in my fancy the clanking of the loosened chains asthey dropped from me. I recalled, one by one, the incidents of myearliest "risky" and yet fortunate venture, when, following theGeneral's advice, I had gone in boldly, and after a short period ofbreathless fluctuation, had "realised," as he had said, "a nice littlefortune for a first hatching." And because this seemed to me the singlemeans of recovery, because I had so often before in my life been guidedby some infallible instinct to seize the last chance that in the outcomehad 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 ofexperience as it was a quality of temperament.

  At home, when I reached there late in the afternoon, I found Sally juststepping out of the General's buggy, while the great man, sacrificinggallantry to the claims of gout, sat, under his old-fashioned linen dustrobe, 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 asecret, 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 whatspirit of averseness.

  "Yes, we've let George into it, but I'm not perfectly sure that heapproves. The idea came to the General and to me almost at the sameinstant, and that is a very good thing to be said of any idea. It provesit to be an elastic one anyway."

  She talked merrily through supper, breaking into smiles from time totime, caressing evidently this idea, which was so elastic, and which shedeclined provokingly to divulge. But I, also, had my secret, for mymind, responding to the springs of hope, toyed ceaselessly with thepossibility of escape. For several weeks this dream of ultimate freedompossessed my thoughts, and then, at last, when the copper trade, insteadof reviving, seemed paralysed for a season, I awakened with a shock, tothe knowledge that I had lost Sally's little fortune as irretrievably asI appeared to have lost my larger one. Clearly my financial genius wasasleep, or off assisting at a sacrifice; and it did little good, as Itoiled home in the afternoon, to curse myself frantically for a perverseand a thankless brute. It was too late now; I had played the fool oncetoo often and the money was gone. Was my brain weakened permanently bythe fever, I wondered? Had the muscles of my will dwindled away andgrown flabby, like the muscles of my body?

  As I left the car, a group of school children ran along the pavement infront 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 propertywhich had descended to him from his father, and that the great man nowsat 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 ifhe 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, thebarouche drew up with a flourish; Balaam, the old negro coachman,settled himself for a doze on the box, and the pair of fat roans beganswitching their long tails in the faces of the swarming school children.

  "So you're just in time, Ben," remarked the General, while he hobbledout in order to help Sally in. "I thought you'd have been at home atleast an hour ago. Meant to come earlier, but something went wrong atthe stables. Something always is wrong at the stables. I wouldn't be inGeorge's shoes for a mint of money. Never a day passes that he isn'tfussing about his horses, or his traps, or his groom. Well, you'reready, Sally? I like a woman who is punctual, and I never in my lifeknew but one who was. That was your Aunt Matoaca. You get it from her, Isuppose. Ah, _she_ never kept you waiting a minute,--no fussing aboutgloves or fans or handkerchiefs. Always just ready when you came forher, 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 thebarouche. "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 enteredand sat down opposite to them, with my back to the horses; and the oldnegro coachman, disappointed at the length of the wait, pulled the reinsgently and gave a slight, admonishing flick at the broad flanks of theroans. Behind the barouche the school children still fluttered, andturning in his seat, the General looked back angrily and threatened themwith a wave of his big ebony walking-stick.

  "What is it, Sally?" I asked, striving to force a curiosity mywretchedness prevented me from feeling; "can't you unfold the mystery?"

  "Be patient, be patient," she responded gaily, leaning back beside theGeneral, as we rolled down the wide street under the wilted, dustyleaves of the trees. "Haven't you noticed for weeks that the General andI 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, bulldogface, flushed now by the heat and covered with a fine perspiration, hadtaken on an absorbed and pondering look. "I never come along here thatit doesn't put me back at least fifty years," he observed, leaning overhis side of the barouche, and peering down one of the side streets thatled past the churchyard. "Sorry they've been meddling with that oldchurch. Better have left it as it used to be in my boyhood. Do you seethat little house there, set back in the yard, with the chimneycrumbling to pieces? That was the first school I ever went to, and itwas taught by old Miss Deborah Timberlake, the sister of WilliamTimberlake who shot all those stags' heads you've got hanging in yourhall. Nobody ever knew why she taught school. Plenty to eat and drink.William gave her everything that she wanted, but she got cranky whenshe'd turned sixty, and insisted on being independent. Independent, shesaid! Pish! Tush. Never learned a word from her. Taught us Englishhistory, then Virginia history. As for the rest of America, she used tosay it didn't have a history, merely a past. Mentioned the Boston teaparty once by mistake, and had to explain that _that_ was an incident,not history. Well, well, it seems a thousand years ago. Never couldunderstand, to save my life, why she took to teaching. Had all shewanted. Her brother William was an odd man. A fine toast. I never hearda better story--I remember them even as a boy--and often enough I've gotthem off since his death. Used to ill-treat his slaves, though, theysaid, and had queer ideas about women and property. Married his wife whodidn't have a red penny, and on his wedding journey, when she called himby his name, replied to her, 'Madam, my dependants are accustomed toaddress 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, wedgedtightly 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 hadstagnated there between the quaint old houses, that same atmosphere ofsadness, of desolation. The houses, still half closed, appeared all butdeserted; the aged negresses, staring after us under their hollowedpalms, looked as if they had stood there forever. Progress, which hadinvaded the neighbouring quarters, had left this one, as yet,undisturbed.

  Opposite to me, Sally smiled with beaming eyes when she met my gaze. Iknew 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 hislips as if he were thinking aloud. On his face, in the deep creaseswhere the perspiration had gathered, the dust, rising from the street,had settled in greyish streaks. From time to time, in an absent-mindedmanner, 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 thatRobert 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, andthe four columns, you can see it with your own eyes. Theophilus tried toprove to me that Robert lived in Bushrod's house, and that he'd attendedhim there in his last illness. Last illness, indeed! The truth is thatTheophilus isn't what he once was. Memory's going and he doesn't like toown it. No use arguing with him--you can't argue with a man whose memoryis going--but there's Robert Carrington's house. You've seen it withyour own eyes. Drive on, Balaam."

  Balaam drove on; and the carriage, leaving the city and the thinningsuburbs, passed rapidly into one of the country roads, white with dust,which stretched between ragged borders of yarrow and pokeberry that werewhite with dust also. The fields on either side, sometimes planted incorn, oftener grown wild in broomsedge or life-everlasting, shimmeredunder the heat, which was alive with the whirring of innumerableinsects. Here and there a negro cabin, built close to the road, stoodbare in a piece of burned-out clearing, or showed behind the thickfanlike leaves of gourd vines, with the heads of sunflowers noddingheavily beside the open doorways. Occasionally, in the first few miles,a covered wagon crawled by us on its way to town, the driver leaning farover the dusty horses, and singing out "Howdy!" in a friendly voice,--towhich the General invariably responded "Howdy," in the same tone, as hetouched the wide brim of his straw hat with his ebony stick.

  "Hasn't got on the scent, has he?" he enquired presently of Sally, witha 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-mouthedfellows that shuts a thing up so tight it explodes before he's aware ofit. He can't hide anything from me. I read him just as if he were abook. It's as well, I reckon, as I told him the other day, that he isn'tstill in love with your wife, Ben, or it would be written all over himas plain as big print."

  My eyes caught Sally's, and she blushed a clear, warm pink to the heavywaves of her hair.

  "Not that he'd ever be such a rascal as to keep up a fancy for a marriedwoman," pursued the great man, unseeing and unthinking. "TheBolingbrokes 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 theconversation to lighter matters.

  "Ah, so we are, so we are. That's a good view of the river, and there'sthe railroad station at the foot of the hill not a half mile away. It'sthe very thing you need, Ben, it will be the making of you and of theyoungster, as I said to Sally when the idea first entered my mind."

  The barouche made a quick turn into a straight lane bordered by oldlocust trees, and stopped a few minutes later before a square red brickcountry house, with four white columns supporting the portico, and abower of ancient ivy growing over the roof.

  "Here we are at last! Oh, Ben, don't you like it?" said Sally, springingto the ground before the horses had stopped.

  "Like it? Of course he likes it," returned the General, impatiently, ashe got out and followed her between the rows of calycanthus bushes thatedged the walk. "What business has he got not to like it after all thetrouble we've been to on his account? It's the very thing for hishealth--that's what I said to you, my dear, as soon as I heard of MissMitty's legacy. 'The old Bending place is for sale and will go cheap,' Isaid. 'Why not move out into the country and give Ben and the youngstera chance to breathe fresh air? He's beginning to look seedy and freshair will set him up.'"

  "But I really don't believe he likes it," rejoined Sally, a littlewistfully, turning, as she reached the columns of the portico, andlooking doubtfully into my face.

  "You know I like anything that you like, Sally," I answered in a voicewhich, 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, atthe back."

  "I thought it would please you, Ben. It seemed to the General and me thevery best thing we could do with Aunt Mitty's money."

  There was a hurt look in her eyes; her mouth trembled as she spoke, andall the charming mystery had fled from her manner. If we had been aloneI should have opened my arms to her, and have made my confession withher 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 Imust, and yet how could I tell her while the little cynical bloodshoteyes 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 headded when we had turned the corner of the house, and stopped on thetrim terrace, covered with beds of sweet-william and foxglove, "What doyou think of that for a view now? If those big poplars were out of theway, you could see clear down to Merrivale, the old Smith place, where Iused to go as a boy."

  Meeting the disappointment in Sally's look, I tried to rise valiantly tothe 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 bysome deadly chill in the very instant of its unfolding. The great manalone, with that power of ignoring the obvious, which had contributed solargely to his success, continued his running comments in his cheerful,dogmatic tone. Some twenty minutes later, when, after an indifferentinspection of the house on our part, and a vigilant one on theGeneral's, we rolled back again in the barouche over the dusty road, hewas still perfectly unaware that the surprise he had sprung had not beenattended by a triumph of pleasure for us all.

  "You're foolish, my dear, about those big poplars," he said a dozentimes, while he sat staring, with an unseeing gaze, at the thin red lineof the sunset over the corn-fields. "They ought to come down, and thenyou 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 thantwelve with Miss Lucy Smith, my first flame--pretty as a pink, all theboys were in love with her."

  Sally's hand stole into mine under the muslin ruffles of her dress, andher eyes, when she looked at me, held a soft, deprecating expression, asif 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 insistingagain that the only improvement needed to the place was that the bigpoplars should come down, had driven serenely away in his big barouche,we ascended the steps in silence, and entered the sitting-room, whichwas filled with the pale gloom of twilight. While I lighted the lamp,she waited in the centre of the room, with the soft, deprecatingexpression still in her eyes.

  "What is it, Ben?" she asked, facing the lamp as I turned; "did you mindmy 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 theGeneral was here."

  "I am glad of that," she said quietly. "If you had kept anything from meand 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 ofall 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 sparklinggaiety. "Come and sit down by me, and we'll have a cup of tea, andyou'll feel better. But first I must tell you that I am a terriblyextravagant person, Ben, for I paid another dollar and a quarter for apound of tea this morning."

  "Thank heaven for it," I returned devoutly.

  "And there's something else. I feel my sins growing on me. Do youremember last winter, when you were worrying so over your losses, anddidn't know where you could turn for cash--do you remember that I paidfive thousand dollars--five thousand dollars, you understand, and that'shalf 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. Whatyou 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 awhile.' Then I found out from George that you'd sold your motor car, andeverything 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, youcouldn't even tell the difference between imitation and real. And thatpound of tea! You know you'd never have gone out and spent your lastdollar and a quarter on a pound of tea."

  "If you'd wanted it, Sally."

  "Well, you speculated with that ten thousand dollars from exactly thesame 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, afterall, I'm a great deal the worse sinner of us two. There, now, I must seeabout the baby. He was very fretful all the morning, and the doctor saysit is the heat. I'm sure, Ben, that he ought to get out of the city. Howcan we manage it?"

  "I'll manage it, dear. The General will be only too glad to lend themoney. I'll go straight over and explain matters to him."

  A cry came from little Benjamin in the nursery, and kissing me hurriedlywith, "Remember, I'm a sinner, Ben," she left the room, while I took upmy hat again, and went up-town to make my confession to the General andrequest his assistance.

  "Lend it to you, you scamp!" he exclaimed, when I found him on his frontporch 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 aboutthat house in the country? I could have sworn you were in a gale overthe idea. Here, Hatty, bring me a pen. I can see perfectly well by thisdamned 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 thatmakes 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 herAunt Matoaca."

  "I know you did," replied George, twirling the end of his mustache. Helooked tired and anxious, and it seemed to me suddenly that the wholecity, 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, andturned 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'llfind she'll stick to you. I've always said that gratitude countedstronger in the sex than love."

  As I went down the steps George joined me, and walked with me to the carline. The look on his face brought to my memory the night I had seen himstaring 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 withSally," 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 mygratitude 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 proudto take help?"

  "No, I won't let her suffer if I have to beg to prevent it. Haven't Ijust 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. Lookingfrom the car window, as it passed on, I saw his slim, straight figuremoving, with bent head, as if plunged in thought, under the electriclight at the corner.