CHAPTER XXXII
I COME TO THE SURFACE
It was a bright June day, I remember, when I came to the surface again,and saw clear sky for the first time for more than two years. I hadentered the office a little late, and the General had greeted me with anoutstretched hand in which I felt the grip of the bones through theflabby flesh.
"Look here, Ben, have you kept control of the West Virginia andWyanoke?" he enquired, and I saw the pupils of his eyes contract to finepoints of steel, as they did when he meant business.
"Nobody wanted it, General. I still own control--or rather I stillpractically own the road."
"Well, take my advice and don't sell to the first man that asks you,even if he comes from the South Midland. I've just heard that they'vebeen tapping those undeveloped coal fields at Wyanoke, and I shouldn'tbe surprised if they turned out, after all, to be the richest in WestVirginia."
It was then that I saw clear sky.
"I'll hold on, General, as long as you say," I replied. "Meanwhile, I'llrun out there and have a look."
"Oh, have a look by all means. I say, Ben," he added after a minute,with a worried expression in his face, "have you heard about the troublethat old fool Theophilus has been getting into? Mark my words, before hedies, he'll land his sister in the poorhouse, as sure as I sit here.Garden needed moisture, he said, couldn't raise some of those scraggy,new-fangled things that nobody can pronounce the names of excepthimself, so he went to work and had pipes laid from one end to theother. When the bill came in there was no way to pay it except bymortgaging his house, so he's gone and mortgaged it. Mrs. Clay, poorlady, came to me on the point of tears--she'll be in the poorhouse yet,I was obliged to tell her so--and entreated me to make an effort torestrain Theophilus. 'I try to keep the catalogues from reaching him,'she said, 'but sometimes the postman slips in without my seeing him, andthen he's sure to deliver one. Whenever Theophilus reads about anystrange specimen, or any hybridising nonsense that nobody heard of whenI was young, he seems to go completely out of his head, and the worst of'em is,' she added," concluded the General, chuckling under his breath,"'there isn't a single pretty, sweet-smelling flower in the lot.'"
"I'm awfully sorry about the house, General. Isn't there some way ofcurbing him?"
"I never saw the bit yet that could curb an old fool," replied the greatman, indignantly; "the next thing his roof will be sold over his head,and they'll go to the poorhouse, that's what I told Mrs. Clay. Poorlady, she was really in a terrible state of mind."
"Surely you won't let it come to that. Wait till these dreamed-of coalfields materialise and I'll take over that mortgage."
The General's lower lip shot out with a sulky and forbidding expression.
"The best thing that could happen to the old fool would be to have hishouse sold above him, and by Jove, if he doesn't cease his extravagance,I'll stand off and let them do it as sure as my name is GeorgeBolingbroke. What Theophilus needs," he concluded angrily, "isdiscipline."
"It's too late to begin to discipline a man of over eighty."
"No, it ain't," retorted the General; "it's never too late. If itdoesn't do him any good in this world, it will be sure to benefit him inthe next. He's entirely too opinionated, that's the trouble with him. Doyou remember the way he sat up over there on Church Hill, and tried tobeat me down that Robert Carrington lived in Bushrod's house, and thathe'd attended him there in his last illness? As if I didn't know BushrodCarrington as well as my own brother. Got all his clothes in Paris. Cansee him now as he used to come to church in one of his waistcoats ofpeaehblow brocade. Yet you heard Theophilus stick out against me.Wouldn't give in even when I offered to take him straight to Bushrod'sgrave in Saint John's Churchyard, where I had helped to lay him. That'sat the back of the whole thing, I tell you. If Theophilus had had alittle discipline, this would never have happened."
"All the same I hope you won't let it come to a sale," I responded, as abunch of telegrams was brought to him, and we settled down to ourmorning's work.
In the afternoon when I went back to the doctor's, I found Sally in thelow canvas chair between the giant-of-battle rose-bush and the bleedinghearts, with George Bolingbroke on the ground at her feet, reading toher, I noticed at a glance, out of a book of poems. George hatedpoetry--I had never forgotten his contemptuous boyish attitude towardLatin--and the sight of him stretched there, his handsome figure at fulllength, his impassive face flushed with a fine colour, produced in me acurious irritation, which sounded in my voice when I spoke.
"I thought you scorned literature, George. Are you acting the part of agay deceiver?"
"Oh, it goes well on a day like this," he rejoined in his amiabledrawling manner; "the doctor has been quoting his favourite verse ofHorace to us. He has had trouble with his hybridising or something, sohe tells us--what is it, doctor? I'm no good at Latin."
Dr. Theophilus, who was planting oysters at the roots of a calla lily,having discovered, as he repeatedly informed us, that such treatmentincreased the number and size of the blossoms, raised his fine old head,and stood up after wiping his trowel on the trimly mown grass in theborder.
"_AEquam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem_," he replied, rollingthe Latin words luxuriously on his tongue, as if he relished theflavour. "That verse of the poet has sustained me in many and variedafflictions. Not to know it is to dispense with an unfailing source ofconsolation in trouble. When using it at a patient's bedside, I havefound that it invariably acted as a sedative to an excited mind. Isometimes think," he added gently, "that if Tina had not been ignorantof Latin, she would have had a--a less practical temper."
Picking up the trowel, which he had laid on the grass, he returned witha calm soul to his difficulties, while Sally, looking up at me withanxious eyes, said:--
"Something has happened, Ben. What is it?"
I broke into a laugh. "Only that that little dead-beat road in WestVirginia may restore my fortune, after all," I replied.
The next day I went to Wyanoke and reorganised the affairs of the littleroad. Shortly afterwards orders for freight cars came in faster than wewere able to supply them, and we called at once on the cars of the GreatSouth Midland and Atlantic.
"If you weren't a friend, this would be a mighty good chance to squeezeyou," remarked the General; "we could keep your cars back until we'dclean squelched your traffic, and then buy the little road up for asong. It's business, but it isn't fair, and I'll be blamed if I'm goingto squelch a friend."
He did not squelch us, being as good as his word; the undeveloped coalfields developed amazingly and the result was that before the year wasover, I had sold the little road at my own price to the big one. Then Istood up and drew breath, like a man released from the weight of irons.
"We can go into our own home," I said joyfully to Sally. "In a year ortwo, if all goes well, and I work hard, we'll be back again where wewere."
"Where we were?" she repeated, and there was, I thought, a listless notein her voice.
"Doesn't it make you happy?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm glad, glad the debt is gone, and now you'll look young andsplendid again, won't you?"
"I'll try hard if you want me to."
"I do want you to," she answered, looking up at me with a smile.
The window was open, and a flood of sunshine fell on her pale brownhair, as it rested against the high arm of a chintz-covered sofa. Herhand, small and childlike, though less round and soft than it had beentwo years ago, caressed my cheek when I bent over her. She was wellagain, she was blooming, but the bloom was paler and more delicate, andthere was a fragility in her appearance which was a new and disturbingsign of diminished strength. Would she ever, even when cradled inluxuries, recover her buoyant health, her sparkling vitality, Iwondered.
The old Bland house, with the two great sycamores growing beside it, wasfor sale; and thinking to please Sally, I bought it without herknowledge, filled, as it was, with the Bland and Fairfax furniture,which had surrounded Miss Mitty and Miss Mat
oaca. On the day some eightor nine months later that we moved into it the sycamores were budding,and there were faint spring scents in the air.
"This is where you belong. This is home to you," I said as we stood onthe wide porch at the back, and looked down on the garden. "You will behappy here, dearest."
"Oh, yes, I'll be happy here."
"It won't be so hard for you when I'm obliged to leave you alone. I'msorry I've had to be away so much of late. Have you been lonely?"
"I've taken up riding again. George has found me a new horse, a beauty.To-morrow I shall follow the hounds with Bonny."
"Oh, be careful, Sally, promise me that you will be careful."
She turned with a laugh that sounded a little reckless.
"There's no pleasure in being careful, and I'm seeking pleasure," sheanswered.
The next morning I went to New York for a couple of days, and when Ireturned late one afternoon, I found Sally, in her riding habit, pouringtea for Bonny Marshall and George Bolingbroke in the drawing-room.
I was very tired, my mind was engrossed in business, as it had beenengrossed since the day of the sale of the West Virginia and WyanokeRailroad, and I was about to pass upstairs to my dressing-room, whenGeorge, catching sight of me, called to me to come in and exert mypowers of persuasion.
"I'm begging Sally to sell that horse, Beauchamp," he said. "She triedto make him take a fence this afternoon and he balked and threw her. Atfirst we were frightened out of our wits, but she got up laughing andinsisted upon mounting him again on the spot."
"Of course you didn't let her," I retorted, with anger.
"Let her? Great Scott! have you been married to a Bland for nearly eightyears and are you still saying, 'let her'?"
"I mounted and rode on with the hunt," said Sally, looking at me withshining eyes in which there was a defiant and reckless expression. "Hegot quite away with me, but I held on and came in at the death, thoughwithout a hat. Now my arms are so sore I shall hardly be able to do myhair."
"Of course you're not to ride that horse again, Sally," I respondedsternly, forgetting my dusty clothes, forgetting Bonny's dancing blackeyes that never left my face while I stood there.
"Of course I am, Ben," rejoined Sally, laughing, while a high colourrose to her forehead. "Of course I'm going to ride him to-morrowafternoon when I go out with Bonny."
"Ah, don't, please," entreated Bonny, in evident distress; "he's reallyan ugly brute, you know, dear, if he is so beautiful."
"I feel awfully mean about it, Ben," said George, "because, you see, Igot him for her."
"And you got him," I retorted, indignantly, "without knowing evidently athing about him."
"One can never know anything about a brute like that. He went like alamb as long as I was on him, but the trouble is that Sally has toolight a hand."
"He'd be all right with me," remarked Bonny, stretching out her arm, inwhich the muscle was hard as steel. "See what a grip I have."
"I'll never give up, I'll never give up," said Sally, and though sheuttered the words with gaiety, the expression of defiance, ofrecklessness, was still in her eyes.
When George and Bonny had gone, I tried in vain to shake this resolve,which had in it something of the gentle, yet unconquerable, obstinacy ofMiss Matoaca.
"Promise me, Sally, that you will not attempt to ride that horse again,"I entreated.
Turning from me, she walked slowly to the end of the room and bent overthe box of sweet alyssum, which still blossomed under a canary cage onthe window-sill. A cedar log was burning on the andirons, and the redlight of the flames fell on the tapestried furniture, on the quaintinlaid spinet in one corner, and on the portrait above it of Miss Mittyand Miss Matoaca clasping hands under a garland of roses.
"Will you promise me, dearest?" I asked again, for she did not answer.
Lifting her head from the flowers, she stood with her hand on one of thedelicate curtains, and her figure, in its straight black habit, drawnvery erect.
"I'll ride him," she responded quietly, "if--if he kills me."
"But why--why--what on earth is the use of taking so great a risk?" Idemanded.
A humorous expression shot into her face, and I saw her full, red lipsgrow tremulous with laughter.
"That," she answered, after a moment, "is my ambition. All of us have anambition, you know, women as well as men."
"An ambition?" I repeated, and looked in mystification at the portraitabove the spinet.
"It sounds strange to you," she went on, "but why shouldn't I have one?I was a very promising horsewoman before my marriage, and my ambitionnow is to--to go after Bonny. Only Bonny says I can't," she addedregretfully, "because of my hands."
"They are too small?"
"Too small and too light. They can't hold things."
"Well, they've managed to hold one at any rate," I responded gaily,though I added seriously the minute afterward, "If you'll let me sellthat horse, darling, I'll give you anything on God's earth that youwant."
"But suppose I don't want anything on God's earth except that horse?"
"There's no sense in that," I blurted out, in bewilderment. "What inthunder is there about the brute that has so taken your fancy?"
Her hand fell from the curtain, and plucking a single blossom of sweetalyssum, she came back to the hearth holding it to her lips.
"He has taken my fancy," she replied, "because he is exciting--and I amcraving excitement."
"But you never used to want excitement."
"People change, all the poets and philosophers tell us. I've wanted itvery badly indeed for the last six or eight months."
"Just since we've recovered our money?"
"Well, one can't have excitement without money, can one? It costs a gooddeal. Beauchamp sold for sixteen hundred dollars."
"He'd sell for sixteen to-morrow if I had my way."
"But you haven't. He's the only excitement I have and I mean to keephim. I shall go out again with the hounds on Saturday."
"If you do, you'll make me miserable, Sally. I shan't be able to do astroke of work."
"Then you'll be very foolish, Ben," she responded, and when I would havestill pressed the point, she ran out of the room with the remark thatshe must have a hot bath before dinner. "If I don't I'll be too stiff tomount," she called back defiantly as she went up the staircase.
All night I worried over the supremacy of Beauchamp, but on the morrowshe was kept in bed by the results of her fall, and before she was upagain, George had spirited the horse off somewhere to a farm in thecountry.
"I'd have turned horse thief before I'd have let her get on him again,"he said. "I bought the brute, so I had the best right to dispose of himas I wanted to."
"Well, I hope you'll do better next time," I returned. "Sally has gotsome absurd idea in her head about rivalling Bonny Marshall, but shenever will because she isn't built that way."
"No, she isn't built that way," he agreed, "and I'm glad of it. When Iwant a boy I'd rather have him in breeches than in skirts. Is she out ofbed yet?"
"She was up this morning, and on the point of telephoning to the stableswhen I left the house."
He laughed softly. "Well, my word goes at the stables," he rejoined, "soyou needn't worry. I'll not let any harm come to her."
The tone in which he spoke, pleasant as it was, wounded my pride ofpossession in some inexplicable manner. Sally was safe! It was all takenout of my hands, and the only thing that remained for me was to returnwith a tranquil mind to my affairs. In spite of myself this constantbeneficent intervention of George in my life fretted my temper. If hewould only fail sometimes! If he would only make a mistake! If he wouldonly attend to his own difficulties, and leave mine to go wrong if theypleased!
This was on my way up-town in the afternoon, and when I reached home, Ifound Sally lying on a couch in her upstairs sitting-room, with an uncutnovel in her hands.
"Ben, did you sell Beauchamp?" she asked, as I entered, and her tone wasfull of suppressed resentment,
of indignant surprise.
"I'm sorry to say I didn't, dear," I responded cheerfully, "for I shouldcertainly have done so if George hadn't been too quick for me."
"It was George, then," she said, and her voice lost its resentment.
"Yes, it was George--everything is George," I retorted, in an irascibletone.
Her eyebrows arched, not playfully as they were used to do, but insurprise or perplexity.
"He has been very good to me all my life," she answered quietly.
"I know, I know," I said, repenting at once of my temper, "and if youwant another horse, Sally, you shall have it--George will find you agentle one this time."
She shook her head, smiling a little.
"I don't want a gentle one. I wanted Beauchamp, and since he has gone Idon't think I care to ride any more. Bonny is right, I suppose, I couldnever keep up with her."
"Just as you like, sweetheart, but for my part, I feel easier, somehow,when you don't go out with the hounds. I'd rather you wouldn't do suchrough riding."
"That's because like most men you have an ideal of a 'faire ladye,'" sheanswered, mockingly. "I'm not sure, however, that the huntress hasn'tthe best of it. What an empty existence the 'faire ladye' must haveled!"
At first I thought her determination was uttered in jest, and would notendure through the night; but as the weeks and the months went by andshe still refused to consider the purchase of the various horses Georgeput through their paces before her, I realised that she really meant, asshe had said, to give up her brief dream of excelling Bonny. Then, for afew months in the spring and summer, she turned to gardening withpassion, and aided by Dr. Theophilus and George, she planted a cart-loadof bulbs in our square of ground at the back. When I came up late now, Iwould find the three of them poring over flower catalogues, withgathered brows and thoughtful, enquiring faces.
"There's nothing like a love of the trowel for making friends," remarkedthe old man, one May afternoon, when I found them resting from theirlabours while they drank tea on the porch; "it's a pity you haven't timeto take it up, Ben. Now, young George there has developed a mostextraordinary talent for gardening that he never knew he possessed untilI cultivated it. I shouldn't wonder if it took the place of the horsewith him in the end. What do you say, Sally?" he added, turning to whereSally and George were leaning together over the railing, with their eyeson a bed of Oriental poppies. "I was telling Ben that I shouldn't wonderif George's taste for flowers would not finally triumph over his fancyfor the horse."
For a minute Sally did not look round, and when at last she turned, herface wore a defiant and reckless expression, as it had done thatafternoon when Beauchamp had thrown her.
"I'm not sure, doctor," she answered; "after all flowers are tame sport,aren't they? And George is like me--what he wants is excitement."
"I'm sorry to hear that, my dear, a gentle and quiet pursuit is a sourceof happiness. You remember what Horace says--"
"Ah, I know, doctor, but did even Horace remember what he said while hewas young?"
George was still gazing attentively down on the bed of Oriental poppiesat the foot of the steps, and though he had taken no part in theconversation, something in his back, in the rigid look of his shoulders,as though his muscles were drawn and tense, made me say suddenly:
"If George has changed his hobby from horse-racing to flowers, I'llbegin to expect the General to start collecting insects."
At this George wheeled squarely upon me, and in his dark, flushed facethere was the set look of a man that has taken a high jump.
"It's a bad plan to pin all your pleasure on one thing, Ben," he said."If you put all your eggs in one basket you're more than likely to stubyour toe."
"Well, a good deal depends upon how wisely you may have chosen yourpursuit," commented the doctor, pushing his spectacles away from hiseyes to his hair, which was still thick and long; "I don't believe thata man can make a mistake in selecting either flowers or insects for hislife's interest. The choice between the two is merely a question oftemperament, I suppose, and though I myself confess to a leaning towardplants, I seriously considered once devoting my declining years to thestudy of the habits of beetles. Your suggestion as to George,however,--old George, I am alluding to,--is a capital one, and I shallcall his attention to it the next time I see him. He couldn't do better,I am persuaded, than bend his remaining energies in the direction ofinsects."
He paused to drink his tea, nodding gently over the rim of his cup toBonny Marshall and Bessy Dandridge, who came through one of the longwindows out upon the porch.
"So you've really stopped for a minute," remarked Bonny merrily,swinging her floating silk train as if it were the skirt of a ridinghabit, "and even Ben has fallen out of the race long enough to get aglimpse of his wife. Have stocks tripped him up again, poor fellow? Doyou know, Sally, it's perfectly scandalous the way you are never seen inpublic together. At the reception at the Governor's the other night, oneof those strange men from New York asked me if George were your husband.Now, that's what I call positively improper--I really felt theatmosphere of the divorce court around me when he said it--and mygrandmama assures me that if such a thing had happened to _your_grandmama, Caroline Matilda Fairfax, she would never have held up herhead again. 'But neither morals nor manners are what they were whenCaroline Matilda and I were young,' she added regretfully, 'and it isdue, I suppose, to the war and to the intrusion into society of allthese new people that no one ever heard of.' When I mentioned the guestsat the two last receptions I'd been to, if you will believe me, she hadnever heard of a single name,--'all mushrooms,' she declared."
Her eyes, dancing roguishly, met mine over the tea-table, and a brightblush instantly overspread her face, as if a rose-coloured search-lighthad fallen on her.
The embarrassment which I always felt in her presence became suddenly asacute as physical soreness, and the blush in her face served only toilluminate her consciousness of my difference, of my roughness, of thefact that externally, at least, I had never managed to shake myself freefrom a resemblance to the market boy who had once brought his basket ofpotatoes to the door of this very house. The "magnificent animal," Iknew, had never appealed to her except as it was represented inhorse-flesh; and yet the "magnificent animal" was what in her eyes Imust ever remain. I looked at George, leaning against a white column,and his appearance of perfect self-sufficiency, his air of needingnothing, changed my embarrassment into a smothered sensation of anger.And as in the old days of my first great success, this anger broughtwith it, through some curious association of impulses, a fierce, almosta frenzied, desire for achievement. Here, in the little world oftradition and sentiment, I might show still at a disadvantage, butoutside, in the open, I could respond freely to the lust for power, tothe passion for supremacy, which stirred my blood. Turning, with amuttered excuse about letters to read, I went into the house, and closedmy study door behind me with a sense of returning to a friendly andfamiliar atmosphere.
Through the rest of the year Sally devoted herself with energy to thecultivation of flowers; but when the following spring opened, after ahard winter, she seemed to have grown listless and indifferent, and whenI spoke of the garden, she merely shook her head and pointed to anunworked border at the foot of the grey-wall.
"I can't make anything grow, Ben. All those brown sticks down there arethe only signs of the bulbs I set out last autumn with my own hands.Nothing comes up as it ought to."
"Perhaps you need pipes like the doctor," I suggested.
"Oh, no, that would uproot the old shrubs, and besides, I am tired ofit, I think."
She was lying on the couch in her sitting-room, a pile of novels on atable beside her, and the delicacy in her appearance, the transparentfineness of her features, of her hands, awoke in me the feeling ofanxiety I had felt so often during the year after little Benjamin'sdeath.
"I'm sorry I can't get up to luncheon now, darling, but we are making abig railroad deal. What have you been doing all day long by yourself?"
She looked up at me, and I remembered the face of Miss Matoaca, as I hadseen it against the red firelight on the afternoon when Sally and I hadgone in to tell her of our engagement.
"I didn't go out," she answered. "It was raining so hard that I stayedby the fire."
"You've been lying here all day alone?"
"Bonny Page came in for a few minutes."
"Have you read?"
"No, I've been thinking."
"Thinking of what, sweetheart?"
"Oh, so many things. You've come up again, haven't you, Ben, splendidly!Luck is with you, the General says, and whatever you touch prospers."
"Yes, I've come up, but this is the crisis. If I slip now, if I make afalse move, if I draw out, I'm as dead as a door-nail. But give me fiveor ten years of hard work and breathless thinking, and I'll be as big aman as the General."
"As the General?" she repeated gently, and played with the petals of anAmerican Beauty rose on the table beside her.
"As soon as I'm secure, as soon as I can slacken work a bit, I'm goingto cut all this and take you away. We'll have a second honeymoon whenthat time comes."
"In five or ten years?"
"Perhaps sooner. Meanwhile, isn't there something that I can do for you?Is there anything on God's earth that you want? Would you like a stringof pearls?"
She shook her head with a laugh. "No, I don't want a string of pearls.Is it time now to dress for dinner?"
"Would you mind if I didn't change, dear? I'm so tired that I shallprobably fall asleep over the dessert."
An evening or two later, when I came up after seven o'clock, I thoughtthat she had been crying, and taking her in my arms, I passionatelykissed the tear marks away.
"There's but one thing to do, Sally. You must go away. What do you sayto Europe?"
"With you?"
"I wish to heaven it could be with me, but if I shirk this deal now, I'mdone for, and if I stick it out, it may mean future millions. Why notask Bessy Dandridge?"
"I don't think I want to go with Bessy Dandridge."
Her tone troubled me, it was so gentle, so reserved, and walking to thewindow, I stood gazing out upon the April rain that dripped softlythrough the budding sycamores. I felt that I ought to go, and yet I knewthat unless I gave up my career, it was out of the question. Therailroad deal was, as I had said, very important, and if I were towithdraw from it now, it would probably collapse and bring down on methe odium of my associates. After my desperate failure of less than fiveyears ago, I was just recovering my ground, and the incidents of thatdisaster were still too recent to permit me to breathe freely. My namehad suffered little because my personal tragedy had been regarded as apart of the general panic, and I had, in the words of GeorgeBolingbroke, "gone to smashes with honour." Yet I was not secure now; Ihad not reached the top of the ladder, but was merely mounting. "It'sfor Sally's sake that I'm doing it," I said to myself, suddenlycomforted by the reflection; "without Sally the whole thing might go toruin and I wouldn't hold up my hand. But I must make her proud of me. Imust justify her choice in the eyes of her friends." And the balm ofthis thought seemed to lighten my weight of trouble and to appease myconscience. "It isn't as if I were doing it for myself, or my ownambition. I am really doing it for her--everything is for her. If I canhold on now, in a few years I'll give her millions to spend." Then Iremembered that the last time I had gone motoring with her it hadappeared to do her good, and that she had remarked she preferred a carwith a red lining.
"I tell you what, sweetheart," I said, going back to her, "as I can'ttake you away, I'll buy you a new motor car with a red lining and I'lltake you out every blessed afternoon I can get off from the office.You'll like that, won't you?" I asked eagerly.
"Yes, I'll like that," she replied, with an effort at animation, whileshe bent her face over the rose in her hand.
A week later I bought the motor car, the handsomest I could find, withthe softest red lining; and when May came, I went out with her wheneverI could break away from my work. But the pressure was great, the Generalwas failing and leaned on me, and I was over head and ears in a dozenoutside schemes that needed only my amazing energy to push them tosuccess. Never had my financial insight appeared so infallible, neverhad my "genius" for affairs shone so brilliantly. The years of povertyhad increased, not dissipated, my influence, and I had come up all thestronger for the experience that had sent me down. The lesson that aweaker man might have succumbed beneath, I had absorbed into myself, andwas now making use of as I had made use of every incident, bad or good,in my life. I passed on, I accumulated, but I did not squander. Littlethings, as well as great things, served me for material, and duringthose first years of my recovery, I became by far the most brilliantfigure in my world of finance. "Pile all the bu'sted stocks in themarket on his shoulders, and he'll still come out on top," chuckled theGeneral. "The best thing that ever happened to you, Ben, barring thetoting of potatoes, was the blow on the head that sent you under water.A little fellow would have drowned, but you knew how to float."
"I'd agree with you about its being the best thing, except--except forSally."
"What's the matter with Sally? Is she going cracked? You know I alwayssaid she was the image of her aunt--Miss Matoaca Bland."
"She has never recovered. Her health seems to have given way."
"She needs coddling, that's the manner of women and babies. Do youcoddle her? It's worth while, though some men don't know how to do it.Lord, Lord, I remember when my poor mother was on her death-bed and myfather got on his knees and asked her if he'd been a good husband (shewas his third wife and died of her tenth child), she looked at him witha kind of gentle resentment and replied: 'You were a saint, I suppose,Samuel, but I'd rather have had a sinner that would have coddled me.'She was the prim, flat-bosomed type, too, just like Miss Mitty Bland,and my father said afterwards, crying like a baby, that he had so muchrespect for her he would as soon have thought of trying to coddle aLombardy poplar. Poplar or mimosa tree, I tell you, they are all madethat way, every last one of them--and nothing on earth made poor MissMatoaca a fire-eater and a disturber of the peace except that she didn'thave a man to coddle her."
"I give Sally everything under heaven I can think of, but she doesn'tappear to want it."
"Keep on giving, it's the only way. You'll see her begin to pick uppresently before you know it. They ain't rational, my boy, that's thewhole truth about 'em, they ain't rational. If Miss Matoaca had belongedto a rational sex, do you think she'd have killed herself trying to geton an equality with us? You can't make a pullet into a rooster byteaching it to crow, as my old mammy used to say." For a minute he wassilent, and appeared to be meditating. "I tell you what I'll do, Ben,"he said at last, with a flash of inspiration, "I'll go in with you andsee if I can't cheer up Sally a bit."
When we reached my door, he let the reins fall over the back of his oldhorse, and getting out, hobbled, with my assistance, upstairs, and intoSally's sitting-room, where we found George Bolingbroke, lookingdepressed and sullen.
She was charmingly dressed, as usual, and as the General entered, shecame forward to meet him with the gracious manner which some one hadtold me was a part, not of her Bland, but of her Fairfax inheritance."That's a pretty tea-gown you've got on," observed the great man, in theplayful tone in which he might have remarked to a baby that it waswearing a beautiful bib. "You haven't been paying much attention tofripperies of late, Ben tells me. Have you seen any hats? I don't knowanything better for a woman's low spirits, my dear, than a trip to NewYork to buy a hat."
She laughed merrily, while her eyes met George Bolingbroke's over theGeneral's head.
"I bought six hats last month," she replied.
"And you didn't feel any better?"
"Not permanently. Then Ben got me a diamond bracelet." She held out herarm, with the bracelet on her wrist, which looked thin and transparent.
The General bent his bald head over the trinket, which he examined asattentively as if it had been a report of t
he Great South Midland andAtlantic Railroad.
"Ben's got good taste," he observed; "that's a pretty bracelet."
"Yes, it's a pretty bracelet."
"But that didn't make you feel any brighter?"
"Oh, I'm well," she responded, laughing. "I've just been telling GeorgeI'm so well I'm going to a ball with him."
"To a ball," I said; "are you strong enough for that, Sally?"
"I'm quite strong, I'm well, I feel wildly gay."
"It's the best thing for her," remarked the General. "Don't stop her,Ben, let her go."
At dinner that night, in a gorgeous lace gown, with pearls on her throatand in her hair, she was cheerful, animated, almost, as she had said,wildly gay. When George came for her, I put her into the carriage.
"Are you all right?" I asked anxiously. "Are you sure you are strongenough, Sally?"
"Quite strong. What will you do, Ben?"
"I've got to work. There are some papers to draw up. Don't let her staylate, George."
"Oh, I'll take care of her," said George. "Good-night."
She leaned out, touching my hand. "You'll be in bed when I come back.Good-night."
The carriage rolled off, and entering the house I went into the library,where I worked until twelve o'clock. Then as Sally had not returned andI had a hard day ahead of me, I went upstairs to bed.
She did not wake me when she came in, and in the morning I found hersleeping quietly, with her cheek pillowed on her open palm, and apensive smile on her lips. After breakfast, when I came up to speak toher before going out, she was sitting up in bed, in a jacket of bluesatin and a lace cap, drinking her coffee.
"Did you have a good time?" I asked, kissing her. "Already you lookbetter."
"I danced ever so many dances. Do you know, Ben, I believe it wasdiversion I needed. I've thought too much and I'm going to stop."
"That's right, dance on if it helps you."
"I can't get that year on Church Hill out of my mind."
"Forget it, sweetheart, it's over; forget it."
"Yes, it's over," she repeated, and then as she lay back, in her bluesatin jacket, on the embroidered pillows and smiled up at me, I saw inher face a reflection of the faint wonder which was the inherited lookof the Blands in regarding life.