The Romance of a Plain Man

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  THE GROWING DISTANCE

  The memory of this look was with me as I went, a little later, down theblock to the car line, but meeting the General at the corner, all othermatters were crowded out of my mind by the gravity of the news he leanedout of his buggy to impart.

  "Well, it's come at last, Ben, just as I said it would," he remarkedcheerfully; "Theophilus is to be sold out at four o'clock thisafternoon."

  "I'd forgotten all about it, General, but do you really mean you willlet it come to a public auction?"

  "It's the only way on God's earth to stop his extravagance. Of courseI'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'mthe only one who can teach it. A little judicious discipline right nowwill 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 therailroad and begin watching insects. Actually brought me a microscopeand some ants in a little box that he had had sent all the way fromCalifornia. Wanted me to build 'em a glass house in my garden, and spendmy time looking at 'em. 'Look here, Theophilus,' I said, 'I haven't cometo my dotage yet, and when I get there, I'm going to take up something alittle bigger than an insect. From a railroad to an ant is too long ajump."

  "But this auction, General, I'm very much worried about it. You know I'dalways intended to take over that mortgage, but, to tell the truth, itescaped my memory."

  "Oh, leave that to me, leave that to me," responded the great manserenely. "Theophilus ain't going to suffer, but a little disciplinewon't do him any harm."

  His plan was well laid, I saw, but the best-laid plans, as the great manhimself might have informed me, are not always those that are destinedto reach maturity. When I had parted from him, I fell, almostunconsciously, to scheming on my own account, and the result was thatbefore going into my office, I looked up the real estate agent who hadcharge of the auction, and took over the mortgage which too great anindulgence in roses had forced upon Dr. Theophilus. In my luncheon hourI rushed up to the house, where I found Mrs. Clay, with a big woodenladle in her hand, wandering distractedly between the outside kitchenand the little garden, where the doctor was placidly spraying his roseswith a solution of kerosene oil.

  "I knew it would come," said the poor lady, in tears; "no amount ofpreserves and pickles could support the extravagance of Theophilus. Morethan two years ago George Bolingbroke warned me that I should end mydays in the poorhouse, and it has come at last. As for Theophilus, eventhe thought of the poorhouse does not appear to disturb him. He doesnothing but walk around and repeat some foolish Latin verse aboutAEquam--aequam--until I am sick of the very sound--"

  When I explained to her that the auction would be postponed, at leastfor another century, she recovered her temper and her spirit, andobserved emphatically that she hoped the lesson would do Theophilusgood.

  "May I go out to him now?"

  "Oh, yes, you'll find him somewhere in the garden. He has just been inwith a watering-pot to ask for kerosene oil."

  In the centre of the gravelled walk, between the shining rows of oystershells, the doctor stood energetically spraying his roses. At the soundof my step he looked round with a tranquil face, his long white hairblowing in the breeze above his spectacles, which he wore, as usual whenhe was not reading, pushed up on his forehead.

  "Ah, Ben, you find us afflicted, but not despondent," he observed. "Nowis the time, as I just remarked to Tina a minute ago, to prove theunfailing support of a knowledge of Latin and of the poet Horace. _AEquammemento_--"

  "I'm afraid, doctor, I haven't time for Horace," I returned, ruthlesslycutting short his enjoyment, while the sonorous sentence still rolled inhis mouth; "but I've attended to this affair of the mortgage, and youshan't be bothered again. Why on earth didn't you come to me soonerabout it?"

  Bending over, he plucked a rosebud with a canker at the heart, and stoodmeditatively surveying it. "An Anna von Diesbach," he observed, "andwhen perfect a most beautiful rose. The truth was, my boy, that I felt adelicacy about approaching my friends in the hour of my misfortunes. OldGeorge I did go to in my extremity, but I fear, Ben,--I seriously fearthat I have estranged old George by making him a present of a little boxof ants. He imagines, I fancy, that I intended a reflection upon hisintelligence. Because the ant is small, he concludes, unreasonably, thatit is unworthy. On the contrary, as I endeavoured to convince him, itpossesses a degree of sagacity and foresight the human being might wellenvy--"

  "I can't stop now, doctor, I'm in too great a rush, but remember, if youever have a few hundred dollars you'd like me to turn over for you, I'mat your service. At all events, preserve your calm soul and leave me tocontend with your difficulties--"

  "The word 'preserve,'" commented the doctor, "though used in a differentand less practical sense, reminds me of Tina. She has sacrificed herpeace of mind to preserves, as I told her this morning. Even I shouldfind it impossible to maintain an equable character, if I lived in theatmosphere of a stove and devoted my energies to a kettle. One'soccupation has, without doubt, a marked influence upon one's attitudetowards the universe. This was in my thoughts entirely when I suggestedto a man of old George's headstrong and undisciplined nature that hewould do well to investigate the habits of a sober and industriousinsect like the ant. He has led an improvident life, and I thought thatas he neared his end, whatever would promote a philosophic cast of mindwould inevitably benefit his declining years--"

  "He doesn't like to be reminded that they are declining, doctor, that'sthe trouble," I returned, as I shook hands hurriedly, and went on downthe 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 myworking day, and it was even later than usual when I arrived at home,too tired to consider dressing for dinner. At the door old Esdrasannounced that Sally had already gone to dine with Bonny Marshall, andwould 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 amimosa tree, which floated in on the warm breeze as I entered thedrawing-room, came to me like the sweet, vague scent of her hair and hergown. A dim light burned under a pink shade in one corner, and so quietappeared the quaint old room, with its faded cashmere rugs and itstapestried furniture, that the eyes of the painted Blands and Fairfaxesseemed alive as they looked down on me from the high white walls. Fromhis wire cage, shrouded in a silk cover, the new canary piped a singleenquiring note as he heard my step.

  I dined alone, waited on in a paternal, though condescending, manner byold Esdras, and when I had finished my coffee I sat for a few minuteswith a cigar on the porch, where the branches of the mimosa tree in fullbloom drooped over the white railing. While I sat there, I thoughtdrowsily of many things--of the various financial schemes in which I wasnow involved; of the big railroad deal which I had refused to shirk andwhich meant possible millions; of the fact that the General was rapidlyaging, and had already spoken of resigning the presidency of the GreatSouth Midland and Atlantic. Then there flashed before me suddenly, inthe midst of my business reflections, the look with which Sally hadregarded me that morning while she lay, in her blue satin jacket, on theembroidered pillows.

  "How alike all the Blands are," I thought sleepily, as I threw the endof my cigar out into the garden and rose to go upstairs to bed; "I nevernoticed until of late how much Sally is growing to resemble her AuntMatoaca."

  At midnight, after two hours' restless sleep, I awoke to find herstanding before the bureau, in a gown of silver gauze, which gave her anillusive appearance of being clothed in moonlight. When I called her,and she turned and came toward me, I s
aw that there was a brilliant,unnatural look in her face, as though she had been dancing wildly orwere in a fever. And this brilliancy seemed only to accentuate thesharpened lines of her features, with their suggestion of delicacy, of atoo 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 ofthe city?"

  Her arms were raised to unfasten the pearl necklace at her throat, andwhile I watched her face in the mirror, I saw that the flush suddenlyleft it and it grew deadly white.

  "It's that queer pain in my back," she said, sinking into a chair, andhiding 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 swayedtoward 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 fallfrom 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 wereto stay here," she added, "you would be almost always away."

  "Go North with Bonny Marshall, as she suggested, and I'll join you fortwo weeks in August."

  Shrinking gently out of my arms, she sat with the unfastened bodice ofher gown slipping away from her shoulders, and her face bent over thepearl 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 theexpression of defiance, of recklessness, I had seen in them first on theafternoon 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 believeit's the thing for you."

  "Then I'll go," she responded quietly, and turning away, as if theconversation were over, she went into her dressing-room to do her hairfor the night.

  Two weeks later she went, and during her absence the long hot summerdragged slowly by while I plunged deeper and deeper into the whirlpoolof affairs. In August I made an effort to spend the promised two weekswith her, but on the third day of my visit, I was summoned home by atelegram; and once back in the city, the General's rapidly failinghealth kept me close as a prisoner at his side. When October came and Imet her at the station, I noticed, with my first glance, that the lookof excitement, of strained and unnatural brilliancy, had returned to herappearance. Some inward flame, burning steadily at a white heat, shonein her eyes and in her altered, transparent features.

  "It's good to have you back again, heaven knows," I remarked, as wedrove up the street between the scattered trees in their changingOctober foliage. "The house has been like a prison."

  For the first time since she had stepped from the train, she leanednearer and looked at me attentively, as if she were trying to recallsome 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, aremoteness, as if in thought, at least, she were standing off somewherein an unapproachable place.

  "I've had nobody to keep me up and I've grown seedy," I replied, tryingto speak with lightness. "Now I'll begin grooming again, but all thesame, I've made a pretty pile of money for you this summer."

  "Oh, money!" she returned indifferently, "I've heard nothing but moneysince I went away. Is there a spot on earth, I wonder, where in this agethey 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 toa quieter and a more healthful life; but with the beginning of thewinter season, she resumed the ceaseless rush of gaiety in which she hadlived for the last two years. She was rarely at home now in theevenings; I came up always too tired or too busy to go out with her, andafter dining alone, without dressing, I would hurry into my study for anhour's work with Bradley, or more often doze for a while before thecedar logs, with a cigar in my hand. On the few occasions when sheremained at home, our conversation languished feebly because the onesubject which engrossed my thoughts was received by her with candid, ifsmiling, scorn.

  "I sometimes wish, Ben," she remarked one evening while we sat by thehearth for a few minutes before going upstairs, "that you'd begin tolearn Johnson's Dictionary again. I'm sure it's more interesting thanstocks."

  The red light of the flames shone on her exquisite fineness, on that"look of the Blands," which lent its peculiar distinction, itssuggestion of the "something else," to her delicate features and to herlong slender figure, which had grown a little too thin. Between her andmyself, divided as we were merely by the space of the fireside, I feltsuddenly that there stretched both a mental and a physical distance; andthis sense of unlikeness,--which I had become aware of for the firsttime, when she stepped from the train that October morning, betweenBonny and George,--grew upon me until I could no longer tell whether itwas my pride or my affection that suffered. I had grown careless, Iknew, of "the little things" that she prized, while I so passionatelypursued the big ones to which she appeared still indifferent. Meeting myimage in one of the old gilt-framed mirrors between the windows, I sawthat my features had taken the settled and preoccupied look of thetypical man of affairs, that my figure, needing the exercise I had hadno time for of late, had grown already unelastic and heavy. Had shenoticed, I wondered, that the "magnificent animal" was losing his hold?Only that afternoon I had heard her laughing with George over sometrivial jest which they had not explained; and this very laughter,because I did not understand it, had seemed, in some subtle way, to drawthem 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 herthroat, were all the things that my money had given her.

  "I've got terribly one-ideaed, Sally, I know," I said, answering herremark 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, andwe'll go to Europe together. We'll have our second honeymoon as soon asI 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 Yorkon 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 trainfrom Washington. That will be in time?"

  "Yes, that will be in time. You are in New York and Washingtontwo-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 thecanary cage, raising the silk cover, while she put her lips to the wiresand piped softly.

  "Dicky is fast asleep," she remarked, turning away, "and you, Ben, arenodding. How dull the evenings are when one has nothing to do."

  The next day I went to New York, and leaving Washington on Thursdayafternoon, I had expected to reach Richmond in time to appear at Sally'sreception by nine o'clock that evening. But a wreck on the road causedthe train to be held back for several hours, and it was already latewhen I jumped from the cab at my door, and hurried under the awningacross the pavement. The sound of stringed instruments playing softlyreached me as it had done so many years ago on the night when I firstcrossed the threshold; and a minute afterwards, when I went hastily upthe 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 me
t the samerebukes from the same charming and smiling faces.

  "You are really the most outrageous man I know," observed BonnyMarshall, stopping me at the foot of the staircase. "Poor Sally has beenso awfully worried that she hasn't any colour, and I've advised hersimply to engage George as permanent proxy. He is taking your place thisevening 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 wasgenerally admitted, in all Virginia, and in her spangled gown, whichfell away from her superb shoulders, there was something brilliant andbarbaric about her that went like strong wine to the head. A minutelater she passed on, surrounded by former discarded lovers; and beforeentering the drawing-room--where Sally was standing between GeorgeBolingbroke and a man whom I did not know--I paused behind a tub offlowering azalea, and watched the brightly coloured gowns of the womenas they flitted back and forth over the shining floor. It was a yearsince 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 oldboyish consciousness of the disadvantage of my size, of my awkwardness,of my increasing weight. I remembered suddenly the figure of Presidentas he had loomed on the night of our first dinner party between thefeathery palm branches in the brilliantly lighted hall; and a sense ofkinship 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 seeSally receiving her guests in her gracious Fairfax manner, with Georgeand the man whom I did not know at her side; and whenever George turnedand spoke, as he did always at the right instant, I was struck by theperfect agreement, the fitness, in their appearance. These things thatshe valued--these adornments of the outside of existence--were not in mypower to bestow except when they could be bought with money. How large,how heavy, I should have appeared there in George's place, which wasmine. For the first time in my life a contempt for mere wealth, and forthe position which the amassment of wealth confers, entered my heart. Inseeking to give money had I, in reality, sacrificed the ability to givethe things that she valued far more? Surrounded by the flowers and thelights and the music of the stringed instruments, I saw her in my memoryframed in the long window of our bedroom on Church Hill, with the dimgrey garden behind her, and the breeze, fragrant with jessamine, blowingthe thin folds of her gown. Some clairvoyant insight, purchased, not bysuccess, but by the suffering of those months, opened my eyes. What Ihad lost, I saw now, was Sally herself--not the outward woman, but theinner spirit, the fineness of sympathy, the quickness of understanding.The things that she could have taught me were the finer beauties oflife--and these I had scorned to learn because they could not be graspedin the hands. The objective, the external, was what I had worshipped,and our real division had come, not from the accident of our differentbeginnings, 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; othersI had never seen, and these walked by with level abstracted eyes fixedon the little group surrounding Sally and George. It was not onlySally's "set"--the older aristocratic circle--that was represented, Iknew, for in the throng I recognised many of "the new people"--of the"mushrooms," of whom Bonny's grandmama had spoken with scorn. OnceGeorge turned and came toward the doorway, and the General, startingsomewhere from a corner, observed in his loud hilarious voice, "I don'tknow what kind of husband you'd have made, George, but, by Jove, you domighty well as a 'hanger-on'!"

  What George's response was I could not hear, but from the dark flushedlook of his features, I judged that he had not received the attack withhis 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 lowwhistle 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 funacting host in another man's house, when you don't know where he keepshis cigars. Sally, Ben's turned up, after all, at the last minute, whenthe hard work is over."

  Crossing the threshold, I joined the little group, shaking hands hereand there, while Sally made running comments in a voice that soundedhopelessly animated and cheerful. She was looking very pale, there weredark violet circles under her eyes, and her gown of some faint sea-greenshade brought out the delicate sharpened lines of her face and throat.The flame, which had burnt so steadily for the last year, seemed to dieout 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 fromhim, before she could raise it to her lips, a tremor of anguish that wasalmost like a convulsion passed into her face. The glass fell from herhand, and the wine, splashing over her gown, stained it in a red streakfrom bosom to hem. Her figure swayed slightly, but when I reached out myarms to catch her, she gazed straight beyond me, with eyes which hadgrown wide and bright from some physical pain.

  "George!" she said, "George!" and the name as she uttered it was anappeal for help.