CHAPTER XVIII
THE PRINCIPLES OF MISS MATOACA
When I walked down to the office now, I began to be pointed out as "theGeneral's wonderful boy." Invitations to start companies, or todirectorships of innumerable boards, were showered upon me, andadventurous promoters of vain schemes sought desperately to shelterthemselves behind my growing credit. Then, in the following October, theconsolidated oil interests bought out my business at my own price, and Iawoke 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, "andout you go."
But my training had been in a hard school, and by the end of the monthhe had ceased to enquire in the mornings "if my hat still fitted myhead."
"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, alwayskeep your eyes on a level. By the way, I saw Sally Mickleborough lastnight, and when I asked her why she fell in love with you, she repliedit was because she saw you pushing a wheel up a hill. Now there's awoman with a reason--you'd better look sharp, or she'll begin talkingpolitics presently like her Aunt Matoaca. What do you think I found onmy desk this morning? A pamphlet, addressed in her handwriting, aboutthe presidential election." Then his tone softened. "So Sally's going tomarry 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 MissMatoaca,--[that poor lady gets flightier every day, she left a pamphlethere this morning about the presidential election]--and the girl told mein the few minutes I saw her in the hall, that she meant to marry younext 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 youngfolks 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 oflove driving a girl to break with her family, I feel like boxing yourears."
"You see, Tina is a cynic," remarked Dr. Theophilus, smiling, "and Idon't doubt that she has her excellent reasons, as usual; most cynicshave. A woman, however, has got to believe in love to the point oflunacy or become a scoffer. What I contend, now, is that love isn'tmoonshine, but that however solid a thing it may be, it isn't, afterall, 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 youcall 'the family'; but I should think the first duty of the family wouldbe to consider the happiness of the individual."
"And do you think, Ben, that you are the only person who is consideringSally'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 hashelped to drive Matoaca Bland clean out of her wits. She's actually sentme 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 asMiss Matoaca," chuckled the doctor.
"That is merely the way she dresses," rejoined Mrs. Clay stiffly; "it isher poke bonnet and black silk mantle that deceives you. As for me, Ican call no woman truly refined who does not naturally avoid the societyof men."
"Well, Tina, I had a notion that all of you were pretty fond of it, whenit comes to that."
"Not of the society of men, Theophilus, but of the select attentions ofgentlemen."
"I'm not taking up for Miss Matoaca," pursued the good man; "I can'tconscientiously do that, and I'm more concerned at this minute about themarriage of Ben and Sally. You may smile at me as superstitious, if youplease, but I never yet saw a marriage turn out happily that was made indefiance of family feeling."
As I could make no reply to this, except to put forward a second timewhat Mrs. Clay had tartly called "the claims of moonshine," I bade thedoctor goodnight, and going upstairs to my room, sat down beside thesmall square window, which gave on the garden, with its miniature boxborders and its single clipped yew-tree, over which a young moon wasrising. "A mixture of a fighter and a dreamer," the old man had oncecalled me, and it seemed to me now that something apart from the merebusiness of living and the alert man of affairs, brooded in me over theyoung moon and the yew-tree.
A letter from Sally had reached me a few hours before, and taking itfrom my pocket, I turned to the lamp and read it for the sixth time witha throbbing heart.
"You ask me if I am happy, dearest," she wrote, "and I answer that I amhappy, with a still, deep happiness, over which a hundred troubles andcares ripple like shadows on a lake. But oh! poor Aunt Mitty, with hersilent hurt pride in her face, and poor Aunt Matoaca, with the strained,unnatural brightness in her eyes, and her cheeks so like rose leavesthat have crumpled. Oh, Ben, I believe Aunt Matoaca is living over againher own romance, and it breaks my heart. Last night I went into herroom, and found her with her old yellowed wedding veil and orangeblossoms laid out on the bed. She tried to pretend that she wasstraightening her cedar chests, but she looked so little andpitiable--if you could only have seen her! I wonder what she would benow if the General had been a man like you? How grateful I am, howprofoundly thankful with my whole heart that I am marrying a man that Ican 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 onmy way to my office. She was coming slowly up Franklin Street, her armsfilled with packages, and when she recognised me, with a shy, startledmovement to turn aside, a number of leaflets fluttered from her grasp tothe 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 Isaw that she looked wan and pinched, and that her bright brown eyes wereshining as if from fever.
"Mr. Starr," she said, straightening her thin little figure as I handedher the leaflets, "I've wanted for some time to speak a word to you onthe 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 ofconscience."
"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 feltmore--strongly, if possible, about unequal marriages. I know that youare a most remarkable young man, but I do not feel that you are in anyway 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 understandthe 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 asentiment. Except in the case of poor Sarah there has never been amesalliance in our history. We have always put one thing above theconsideration of our blood, and that is--a principle. If it were aquestion of conscience, however painful it might be to me, I shoulduphold my niece in her opposition to my sister Mitty. I myself haveopposed 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 almostsee 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, Iwas left standing on the pavement with her suffrage pamphlets flutteringin my hand. Stuffing them hurriedly into my pocket, I went on to theoffice, utterly oblivious of the existence of any principle on earthexcept the one underlying the immediate expansion of the Great SouthMidland and Atlantic Railroad.
A fortnight later I heard that Miss Matoaca had begun writing letters tothe "Richmond Herald"; and I remembered, with an easy masculinecomplacency, the pamphlets I had thrown into the waste basket beside theGeneral's desk. The presidential election, with its usual upheaval ofthe business world, had arrived; and that timid little Miss Matoacashould have intruded herself into the affairs of the nation did notoccur to me as possible, until the General informed me, while we watcheda Democratic procession one afternoon, that Miss Mitty had come to himthe day before in tears over the impropriety of her sister's conduct.
"She begged me to remonstrate with Miss Matoaca," he pursued, "and byGeorge, I promised her that I would. There's one thing, Ben, I've neverbeen able to stand, and that's the sight of a woman in tears. Of coursewhen you've made 'em cry yourself, it is different; but to have a ladycoming to you weeping over somebody else--and a lady like MissMitty--well, I honestly believe if she'd requested me to give her myskin, 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 Generallecturing his old love on the subject of the proprieties had caught myattention even in the midst of a large Democratic procession that wasmarching 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 thepolitical banners with their familiar, jesting inscriptions.
"I declare, Ben, I'd rather have swallowed a dose of medicine," he wenton; "you see I used to know Miss Matoaca very well forty years ago--Ireckon you've heard of it. We were engaged to be married, and it wasbroken off because of some woman's rights nonsense she'd got in herhead."
"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 Icould. '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 alwaysplenty 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 ofyou.' '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. Idon'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 eagercuriosity came into his face.
"Can you read that inscription, Ben? My eyes ain't so good as they usedto 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 apoor miserable old maid at this moment. What's that coming they'remaking 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 passedinto my own mind as I looked. There she was, in her poke bonnet and herblack silk mantle, walking primly at the straggling end of theprocession, among a crowd of hooting small boys and gaping negroes. Hereyes, very wide and bright, like the eyes of one who is mentallyderanged, were fixed straight ahead, over the lines of men marching infront of her, on the blue sky above the church steeples. Under her pokebonnet I saw her meekly parted hair and her faded cheeks, flushed nowwith a hectic colour. In one neatly gloved hand her silk skirt was heldprimly; in the other she carried a little white silk flag, on which thestaring gold letters were lost in the rippling folds. With her eyes onthe sky and her feet in the dust, she marched, a prim, ladylike figure,an inspired spinster, oblivious alike of the hooting small boys and thehalf-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 withthe 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 hadseen her in the rising moon over the clipped yew, and in the whirlpoolof the stock market. Leaving my place at the General's side, I descendedthe steps at a bound, and made my way through the jostling, noisy crowdto the little lady in its midst.
"Miss Matoaca!" I said.
For the first time her eyes left the sky, and as she looked down, theconsciousness 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 shewere repeating by rote a phrase in a strange tongue.
At my approach the ridicule, somewhat subdued by the sense of herhelplessness, broke suddenly loose. Bending over I offered her my arm,my head still uncovered. As the hand holding the white flag drooped fromexhaustion, 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 thenher strength failing her, she sank back, with a pathetic moan ofweariness, into my arms. Lifting her like a child I carried her out ofthe street and up the steps into the General's office. Turning at atouch 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 thelounge."
Kneeling on the floor she began bathing Miss Matoaca's forehead withwater which somebody had brought. The General, his eyes very red andbloodshot and his lower lip fallen into a senile droop, was tryingvainly to fan her with his pocket-handkerchief.
"We have always feared this would happen," said Sally, very quiet andpale.
"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, andon the lounge beneath, Miss Matoaca lay, very prim and maidenly, withher skirt folded modestly about her ankles.
Dr. Theophilus, coming in with the messenger, bent over her for a longminute.
"I always thought her sense of honour would kill her," he said at lastas he looked up.