CHAPTER XXXIV
THE BLOW THAT CLEARS
Until dawn the doctor was with her, but in the afternoon, when I wentinto her room, I found that she had got out of bed and was dressed formotoring.
"Oh, I'm all right. There's nothing the matter with me except that I amsmothering for fresh air," she said almost irritably, in reply to myremonstrances.
"But you are ill, Sally. You are as pale as a ghost."
She shook her head impatiently, and I noticed that the furs she woreseemed to drag down her slender figure.
"The wind will bring back my colour. If I lie there and think all day, Ishall go out of my mind." Her lips trembled and a quiver passed throughher face, but when I made a step toward her, she repulsed me with agesture which, gentle as it was, appeared to place me at a measureddistance. "I wish--oh, I wish Aunt Euphronasia wasn't dead," she said ina whisper.
"If you go, may I go with you?" I asked.
For a minute she hesitated, then meeting my eyes with a glance in whichI read for the first time since I had known her, a gentle aversion, afaint hostility, she answered quietly:--
"I am sorry, but I've just telephoned Bonny that I'd call for her."
The old bruise in my heart throbbed while I turned away; but the paininstead of melting my pride, only increased the terrible reticence whichI wore now as an armour. Her face, above the heavy furs that seemeddragging her down, had in it something of the soft, uncompromisingobstinacy of Miss Matoaca. So delicate she appeared that I could almosthave broken her body in my grasp; yet I knew that she would not yieldthough I brought the full strength of my will to bear in the struggle.In the old days, doubtless, Matoaca Bland, then in her pride and beauty,had faced the General with this same firmness which was as soft asvelvet yet as inflexible as steel.
A few days after this, the great man, who had grown at last too feeblefor an active part in "affairs," resigned the presidency of the SouthMidland, and retired, as he said, "to enjoy his second childhood."
"It's about time for Theophilus to bring around his box of ants, Ireckon," he observed, and added seriously after a moment, "Yes, there'sno use trying to prop up a fallen tree, Ben. I've had a long life and agood life, and I am willing to draw out. It's a losing game any way youplay it, when it comes to that. I've thought a lot about it, my boy,these last weeks, and I tell you the only thing that sticks by you tothe last is the love of a woman. If you need a woman when you are young,you need her ten thousand times more when you're old. If Miss Matoacahad married me, we'd both of us have been a long ways better off."
That night I told Sally of the resignation, and repeated to her a partof the conversation. The sentimental allusion to Miss Matoaca shetreated with scorn, but after a few thoughtful moments she said:--
"You've always wanted to be president of the South Midland more thananything in the world?"
"More than anything in the world," I admitted absently.
"There's a chance now?"
"Yes, I suppose there's a chance now."
She said nothing more, but the next morning as I was getting into myovercoat, she sent me word that she wished to speak to me again before Iwent out.
"I'll be up in a minute," I answered, and I had turned to follow themaid up the staircase, when a sharp ring at the telephone distracted myattention.
"Come down in five minutes if you can," said a voice. "You're wantedbadly about the B. and R. deal."
"Is your mistress ill?" I enquired, turning from the telephone to takeup my overcoat.
"I think not, sir," replied the woman, "she is dressing."
"Then tell her I'm called away, but I will see her at luncheon," Ianswered hurriedly, as I rushed out.
Upon reaching my office, I found that my presence was required inWashington before two o'clock, and as I had not time to return home, Itelephoned Sally for my bag, which she sent down to the station byMicah, the coachman.
"I hope to return early to-morrow," I said to the negro from theplatform, as the train pulled out.
In my anxiety over the possible collapse of the important B. and R.deal, the message that Sally had sent me that morning was crowded forseveral hours out of my thoughts. When I remembered it later in theafternoon, I sent her a telegram explaining my absence; and myconscience, which had troubled me for a moment, was appeased by thisattention that would prove to her that even in the midst of my businessworries I had not forgotten her. There was, indeed, I assured myself, nocause for the sudden throb of anxiety, almost of apprehension, I hadfelt at the recollection of the message that I had disregarded. She hadlooked stronger yesterday; I had commented at dinner on the fine flushin her cheeks; and the pain, which had caused me such sharp distresswhile it lasted, had vanished entirely for the last thirty-six hours.Then the sound of her voice, with its note of appeal, of helplessness,of terror, when she had called upon George at the reception, returned tome as if it were spoken audibly somewhere in my brain. I saw her eyes,wide and bright, as they had been when they looked straight beyond me insearch of help, and her slender, swaying figure in its gown of a palesea-foam shade that was stained from bosom to hem with the red streak ofthe wine. "Yet there is nothing to worry about," I thought, annoyedbecause I could not put this anxiety, this apprehension, out of my mind."She is not ill. She is better. Only last night I heard her laughing asshe has not done for weeks."
The afternoon was crowded with meetings, and it was three o'clock thenext day when I reached home and asked eagerly for Sally as I went upthe staircase. She had gone out, her maid informed me, but I would finda note she had left on my desk in the library. Turning hastily back, Itook up the note from the silver blotter beneath which it was lying, andas I opened it, I saw that the address looked tremulous and uncertain,as if it had been written in haste or excitement.
"Dear Ben (it read), I have been in trouble, and as I do not wish to disturb you at this time, I am going away for a few days to think it over. I shall be at Riverview, the old place on James River where mamma and I used to stay--but go ahead with the South Midland, and don't worry about me, it is all right.
"SALLY."
"I have been in trouble," I repeated slowly. "What trouble, and whyshould she keep it from me? Oh, because of the presidency of the SouthMidland! Damn the South Midland!" I said suddenly aloud. A time-tablewas on my desk, and looking into it, I found that a train left forRiverview in half an hour. I rang the bell and old Esdras appeared toannounce luncheon.
"I want nothing to eat. Bring me a cup of coffee. I must catch a trainin a few minutes."
"Fur de Lawd's sake, Marse Ben," exclaimed the old negro, "you ain'never gwineter res' at home agin."
Still grumbling he brought the coffee, and I was standing by the deskwith the cup raised to my lips, when the front door opened and shutsharply, and the General came into the room, leaning upon twogold-headed walking-sticks. He looked old and tired, and more than ever,in his fur-lined overcoat, like a wounded eagle.
"Ben," he said, "what's this Hatty tells me about George taking Sallyout motoring with him yesterday, and not bringing her back? Has therebeen an accident?"
My arteries drummed in my ears, and for a minute the noise shut out allother sounds. Then I heard a carriage roll by in the street, and thefaint regular ticking of the small clock on the mantel.
"Sally is at Riverview," I answered, "I am going down to her on the nexttrain."
"Then where in the devil is George? He went off with her."
"George may be there, too. I hope he is. She needs somebody with her."
A purple flush rose to the General's face, and the expression in hissmall, watery grey eyes held me speechless.
"Confound you, Ben!" he exclaimed, in a burst of temper, "do you mean totell me you don't know that George's blamed foolishness is the talk ofthe town? Why, he hasn't let Sally out of his sight for the last twoyears."
"No, I didn't know it," I replied.
"Great Scott! Where are your wits?"
"In the st
ock market," I answered bitterly. Then something in me, out ofthe chaos and the darkness, rose suddenly, as if with wings, into thelight. "Of course Sally is an angel, General, we both know that--but howshe could have helped seeing that George is the better man of us, Idon't for a minute pretend to understand."
"Well, I never had much opinion of George," responded the General. "Italways seemed to me that he ought to have made a great deal more ofhimself than he has done."
"What he has made of himself," I answered, and my voice sounded harsh inmy ears, "is the man that Sally ought to have married."
I went out hurriedly, forgetting to assist him, and limping painfully,he followed me to the porch, and called after me as I ran down into thestreet. Looking back, as I turned the corner, I saw him getting withdifficulty into his buggy, which waited beside the curbing, and itseemed to me that his great bulky figure, in his fur-lined overcoat, wasunreal and intangible like the images that one sees in sleep.
The train was about to pull out as I entered the station, and swingingon to the rear coach, I settled myself into the first chair I came to,which happened to be directly behind the shining bald head and red neckof a man I knew. As I shrank back, he turned, caught sight of me, andheld out his hand with an easy air of good-fellowship.
"So General Bolingbroke has retired from the South Midland and AtlanticRailroad, I hear," he remarked. "Well, there's a big job waiting forsomebody, but he'll have to be a big man to fit it."
A sudden ridiculous annoyance took possession of me; the General, theSouth Midland Railroad, and the bald-headed man before me, all appearedto enter my consciousness like small, stinging gnats that swarmed aboutlarger bodies. What was the railroad to me, if I had lost Sally? Had Ilost her? Was it possible to win her again? "I am in trouble," the wordswhirled in my thoughts, "and as I do not wish to disturb you at thistime, I have gone off for a few days to think it over." Was the troubleassociated with George Bolingbroke? Did she mind the gossip? Did shethink I should mind it? Whatever it was, why didn't she come to me andweep it out on my breast? "I didn't want to disturb you at this time."At this time? That was because of the South Midland and AtlanticRailroad. "Damn the South Midland and Atlantic Railroad!" I said againunder my breath.
The red neck of the bald-headed man in front of me suddenly turned.
"Going down for a little hunting?" he enquired genially, "there isn'tmuch else, I reckon, to take a man like you down into this half-bakedcountry. I hear the partridges are getting scarce, and they are going tobring a bill into the Legislature forbidding the sending of them outsideof the state. Now, that's a direct slap, I say, at the small farmer. Abird is a bird, ain't it, even if it's a Virginia partridge?"
I rose and took up my overcoat. "I'll go into the smoking-car. They keepit too hot here."
He nodded cheerfully. "I was in there myself, but it's like an oven,too, so I came out." Then he unfolded his newspaper, and I passedhurriedly down the aisle of the coach.
In the smoking-car the air was like the fumes in the stemming room of atobacco factory, but lighting a cigar, I leaned back on one of the hard,plush-covered seats, and stared out at the low, pale landscape beyondthe window. It was late November, and the sombre colours of the fieldsand of the leafless trees showed through a fine autumnal mist, whichlent an atmosphere of melancholy to the stretches of fallow land, to theharvested corn-fields, in which the stubble stood in rows, like aheadless army, and to the long red-clay road winding, deep in mud, tothe distant horizon.
"I am in trouble--I am in trouble," I heard always above the roar of thetrain, above the shrill whistle of the engine, as it rounded a curve,above the thin, drawling voices of my fellow-passengers, disputing aquestion in politics. "I am in trouble," ran the words. "What trouble?What trouble? What trouble?" I repeated passionately, while my teeth bitinto my cigar, and the flame went out. "So George hasn't let her out ofhis sight for two years, and I did not know it. For two years! And inthese two years how much have I seen of her--of Sally, my wife? We havebeen living separate lives under the same roof, and when she asked mefor bread, I have given her--pearls!" A passion of remorse gripped me atthe throat like the spring of a beast. Pearls for bread, and that toSally--to my wife, whom I loved! The melancholy landscape at which Ilooked appeared to divide and dissolve, and she came back to me, not asI had last seen her, weighed down by the furs which were too heavy, butin her blue gingham apron with the jagged burn on her wrist, and thepatient, divine smile hovering about her lips. If she went from me now,it would be always the Sally of that year of poverty, of suffering, thatI had lost. In the future she would haunt me, not in her sea-green gown,with the jewels on her bosom, but in her gingham apron with the sleevesrolled back from her reddened arms and the jagged scar from the burndisfiguring her flesh.
"I'll see him in hell, before I'll vote for him!" called out a voice atmy back, in a rage.
The train pulled into the little wayside station of Riverview, andgetting out, I started on the walk of two miles through the flat, brownfields to the house. The road was heavy with mud, and it was likeploughing to keep straight on in the single red-clay furrow which thewheels of passing wagons had left. All was desolate, all was deserted,and the only living things I saw between the station and the house werea few lonely sheep browsing beside a stream, and the brown-winged birdsthat flew, with wet plumage, across the road.
When I reached the ruined gateway of Riverview, the old estate of theBlands', I quickened my pace, and went rapidly up the long drive to thefront of the house, where I saw the glimmer of red firelight on theivied window-panes in the west wing. As I ascended the steps, there wasa sound on the gravel, and George Bolingbroke came around the corner ofthe house, in hunting clothes, with a setter dog at his heels.
"Hello, Ben!" he remarked, half angrily. "So you've turned up, have you?Has there been another panic in the market?"
"Is Sally here?" I asked. "I'm anxious about her."
"Well, it's time you were," he answered. "Yes, she's inside."
He stopped in the centre of the walk, and turning from the door, I cameback and faced him in a silence that seemed alive with the beating ofinnumerable wings in the air.
"Something's wrong, George," I said at last, breaking through myrestraint.
He looked at me with a calm, enquiring gaze while I was speaking, and bythat look I understood, in an inspiration, he had condemned me.
"Yes, something's wrong," he answered quietly, "but have you just foundit out?"
"I haven't found it out yet. What is it? What is the matter?"
At the question his calmness deserted him and the dark flush of angerbroke suddenly in his face.
"The matter is, Ben," he replied, holding himself in with an effort,"that you've missed being a fool only by being a genius instead."
Then turning away, as if his temper had got the better of him, he strodeback through a clump of trees on the lawn, while I went up the stepsagain, and crossing the cold hall, entered the dismantled drawing-room,where a bright log fire was burning.
Sally was sitting on the hearth, half hidden by the high arms of thechair, and as I closed the door behind me, she rose and stood looking atme with an expression of surprise. So had Miss Mitty and Miss Matoacalooked in the firelight on that November afternoon when Sally and I hadgone in together.
"Why, Ben!" she said quietly, "I thought you were in Washington!"
"I got home this morning and found your note. Sally, what is thetrouble?"
"You came after me?"
"I came after you. The General went wild and imagined that there hadbeen an accident, or George had run off with you."
"Then the General sent you?"
"Nobody sent me. I was leaving the house when he found me."
She had not moved toward me, and for some reason, I still stood where Ihad stopped short in the centre of the room, kept back by the reserve,the detachment in her expression.
"You came believing that George and I had gone off together?" she asked,and there was a fa
int hostility in her voice.
"Of course I didn't believe it. I'm not a fool if I am an ass. But if Ihad believed it," I added passionately, "it would have made nodifference. I'd have come after you if you'd gone off with twentyGeorges."
"Well, there's only one," she said, "and I did go off with him."
"It makes no difference."
"We left Richmond at ten o'clock yesterday, and we've been here eversince."
"What does that matter?"
"You mean it doesn't matter that I came away with George and spenttwenty-four hours?"
"I mean that nothing matters--not if you'd spent twenty-four years."
"I suppose it doesn't," she responded quietly, and there was a curiousremoteness, a hollowness in the sound of the words. "When one comes tosee things as they are, nothing really matters. It is all just thesame."
Her face looked unsubstantial and wan in the firelight, and so ethereal,so fleshless, appeared her figure, that it seemed to me I could seethrough it to the shining of the flames before which she stood.
"I can't talk, Sally," I said, "I am not good at words, I believe I'mmore than half a fool as George has just told me--but--but--I wantyou--I've always wanted you--I've never in my heart wanted anything inthe world but you--"
"I don't suppose even that matters much," she answered wearily, "but ifyou care to know, Ben, George and Bonny found me when I was aloneand--and very unhappy, and they brought me with them when they came downto hunt. They are hunting now."
"You were alone and unhappy?" I said, for George Bolingbroke and BonnyMarshall had faded from me into the region of utterly indifferentthings.
"It was that I wanted to tell you the morning you couldn't wait," shereturned gently; "I had kept it from you the night before because I sawthat you were so tired and needed sleep. But--but I had seen twodoctors, both had told me that I was ill, that I had some trouble of thespine, that I might be an invalid--a useless invalid, if I lived,that--that there would never be another child--that--"
Her voice faltered and ceased, for crossing the room with a bound, I hadgathered her to my breast, and was bending over her in an intensity, aviolence of love, crushing back her hands on her bosom, while I kissedher face, her throat, her hair, her dress even, as I had never kissedher in the early days of our marriage. The passion of happiness in thatradiant prime was pale and bloodless beside the passion of sorrow whichshook me now.
"Stop, stop, Ben," she said, struggling to be free, "let me go. You arehurting me."
"I shall never stop, I shall never let you go," I answered, "I shallhold you forever, even if it hurts you."