The Romance of a Plain Man

"I know, I know," I said, taking her into my arms.

"And everybody else is so kind. People have been sending me flowers all day. Did you ever see such a profusion? They are all calling, too, – the Fitzhughs, the Harrisons, the Tuckers, the Mayos, Jennie Randolph came, and old Mrs. Tucker, who never goes anywhere since her daughter died, and Charlotte Peyton, and all the Corbins in a bunch." Then her tone changed. "Ben," she said, "I want to see that little sister of yours. Will you take me there this afternoon?"

Something in her request, or in the way she uttered it, touched me to the heart.

"I'd like you to see Jessy – she's pretty enough to look at – but I didn't mean you to marry my family, you know."

"I know you didn't, dear, but I've married everything of yours all the same. If you can spare a few minutes after luncheon, we'll drive down and speak to her."

I could spare the few minutes, and when the carriage was ready, she came down in her hat and furs, and we went at a merry pace down Franklin Street to the boarding-house in which Jessy was living. As we drove up to the pavement, the door of the house opened and my little sister came out, dressed for walking and looking unusually pretty.

"Why, Ben, she's a beauty!" said Sally, in a whisper, as the girl approached us. To me Jessy's face had always appeared too cold and vacant for beauty, in spite of her perfect features and the brilliant fairness of her complexion. Even now I missed the glow of feeling or of animation in her glance, as she crossed the pavement with her slow, precise walk, and put her hand into Sally's.

"How do you do? It is very kind of you to come," she said in a measured, correct voice.

"Of course I came, Jessy. I am your new sister, and you must come and stay with me when I am out of mourning."

"Thank you," responded Jessy gravely, "I should like to."

The cold had touched her cheek until it looked like tinted marble, and under her big black hat her blond hair rolled in natural waves from her forehead.

"Are you happy here, Jessy?" I asked.

"They are very kind to me. There's an old gentleman boarding here now from the West. He is going to give us a theatre party to-night. They say he has millions." For the first time the glow of enthusiasm shone in her limpid blue eyes.

"A good use to make of his millions," I laughed. "Do you hear often from President, Jessy?"

The glow faded from her eyes and they grew cold again. "He writes such bad letters," she answered, "I can hardly read them."

"Never forget," I answered sternly, "that he denied himself an education in order that you might become what you are."

While I spoke the door of the house opened again, and the old gentleman she had alluded to came gingerly down the steps. He had a small, wizened face, and he wore a fur-lined overcoat, in which it was evident that he still suffered from the cold.

"This is my brother and my sister, Mr. Cottrel," said Jessy, as he came slowly toward us.

He bowed with a pompous manner, and stood twirling the chain of his eye-glasses. "Yes, yes, I have heard of your brother. His name is well known already," he answered. "I congratulate, sir," he added, "not the 'man who got rich quickly,' as I've heard you called, but the fortunate brother of a beautiful sister."

"What a perfectly horrid old man," remarked Sally, some minutes later, as we drove back again. "I think, Ben, we'll have to take the little sister. She's a beauty."

"If she wasn't so everlastingly cold and quiet."

"It suits her style – that little precise way she has. There's a look about her like one of Perugino's saints."

Then the carriage stopped at the office, and I returned, with a high heart, to the game.

CHAPTER XXI

I AM THE WONDER OF THE HOUR

During the first year of my marriage I was already spoken of as the most successful speculator in the state. The whirlpool of finance had won me from the road, and I had sacrificed the single allegiance to the bolder moves of the game. Yet if I could be bold, I was cautious, too, – and that peculiar quality which the General called "financial genius," and the world named "the luck of the speculator," had enabled me to act always between the two dangerous extremes of timidity and rashness. "To get up when others sat down, and to sit down when others got up," I told the General one day, had been the rule by which I had played.

"They were talking of you at the club last night, Ben," he said. "You were the only one of us who had sense enough to load up with A. P. & C. stock when it was selling at 80, and now it's jumped up to 150. Jim Randolph was fool enough to remark that you'd had the easiest success of any man he knew."

"Easy? Does he think so?"

"So you call that easy, gentlemen?' I responded. 'Well, I tell you that boy has sweated for it since he was seven years old. It's the only way, too, I'm sure of it. If you want to succeed, you've got to begin by sweating.'"

"Thank you, General, but I suppose most things look easy until you've tried them."

"It doesn't look easy to me, Ben, when I've seen you at it all day and half the night since you were a boy. What I said to those fellows at the club is the Gospel truth – there's but one way to get anything in this world, and that is by sweating for it."

We were in his study, to which he was confined by an attack of the gout, and at such times he loved to ramble on in his aging, reminiscent habit.

"You know, General," I said, "that they want me to accept the presidency of the Union Bank in Jennings' place. I've been one of the directors, you see, for the last three or four years."

"You'd be the youngest bank president in the country. It's a good thing, and you'd control enough money to keep you awake at night. But remember, Ben, as my dear old coloured mammy used to say to me, 'to hatch first ain't always to crow last.'"

"Do you call it hatching or crowing to become president of the Union Bank?"

"That depends. If you're shrewd and safe, as I think you are, it may turn out to be both. It would be a good plan, though, to say to yourself every time you come up Franklin Street, 'I've toted potatoes up this hill, and not my own potatoes either.' It's good for you, sir, to remember it, damned good."

"I'm not likely to forget it – they were heavy."

"It was the best thing that ever happened to you – it was the making of you. There's nothing I know so good for a man as to be able to remember that he toted somebody else's potatoes. Now, look at that George of mine. He never toted a potato in his life – not even his own. If he had, he might have been a bank president to-day instead of the pleasant, well-dressed club-man he is, with a mustache like wax-work. I've an idea, Ben, but don't let it get any farther, that he never got over not having Sally, and that took the spirit out of him. She's well, ain't she?"

"Yes, she's very well and more beautiful than ever."

"Hasn't developed any principles yet, eh? I always thought they were in her."

"None that interfere with my comfort at any rate."

"Keep an eye on her and keep her occupied all the time. That's the way to deal with a woman who has ideas – don't leave her a blessed minute to sit down and hatch 'em out. Pet her, dress her, amuse her, and whenever she begins to talk about a principle, step out and buy her a present to take her mind off it. Anything no bigger than a thimble will turn a woman's mind in the right direction if you spring it on her like a surprise. Ah, that's the way her Aunt Matoaca ought to have been treated. Poor Miss Matoaca, she went wrong for the want of a little simple management like that. You never saw Miss Matoaca Bland when she was a girl, Ben?"

"I have heard she was beautiful."

"Beautiful ain't the word, sir! I tell you the first time I ever saw her she came to church in a white poke bonnet lined with cherry-coloured silk, and her cheeks exactly a match to her bonnet lining." He got out his big silk handkerchief, and blew his nose loudly, after which he wiped his eyes, and sat staring moodily at his foot bandaged out of all proportion to its natural size.

"Who'd have thought to look at her then," he pursued, "that she'd go cracked over this Yankee abolition idea before she died."

"Why, I thought they owned slaves up to the end, General."

"Slaves? What have slaves got to do with it? Ain't the abolitionists and the woman suffragists and the rest of those damned fire-eating Yankees all the same? What they want to do is to overturn the Constitution, and it makes no difference to 'em whether they overturn it under one name or the other. I tell you, Ben, as sure's my name's George Bolingbroke, Matoaca Bland couldn't have told me to the day of her death whether she was an abolitionist or a woman's suffragist. When a woman goes cracked like that, all she wants is to be a fire-eater, and I doubt if she ever knows what she is eating it about. Women ain't like men, my boy, there isn't an ounce of moderation to the whole sex, sir. Why, look at the way they're always getting their hearts broken or their heads cracked. They can't feel an emotion or think an idea that something inside of 'em doesn't begin to split. Now, did you ever hear of a man getting his heart broken or his brain cracked?"

The canker was still there, doing its bitter work. For forty years Miss Matoaca had had her revenge, and even in the grave her ghost would not lie quiet and let him rest. In his watery little eyes and his protruding, childish lip, I read the story of fruitless excesses and of vain retaliations.

When I reached home, I found Sally in her upstairs sitting-room with Jessy, who was trying on an elaborate ball gown of white lace. Since the two years of mourning were over, the little sister had come to stay with us, and Sally was filled with generous plans for the girl's pleasure. Jessy, herself, received it all with her reserved, indifferent manner, turning her beautiful profile upon us with an expression of saintly serenity. It amused me sometimes to wonder what was behind the brilliant red and white of her complexion – what thoughts? what desires? what impulses? She went so placidly on her way, gaining what she wanted, executing what she planned, accepting what was offered to her, that there were moments when I felt tempted to arouse her by a burst of anger – to discover if a single natural instinct survived the shining polish of her exterior. Sally had worked a miracle in her manner, her speech, her dress; and yet in all that time I had never seen the ripple of an impulse cross the exquisite vacancy of her face. Did she feel? Did she think? Did she care? I demanded. Once or twice I had spoken of President, trying to excite a look of gratitude, if not of affection; but even then no change had come in the mirror-like surface of her blue eyes. President, I was aware, had sacrificed himself to her while I was still a child, had slaved and toiled and denied himself that he might make her a lady. Yet when I asked her if she ever wrote to him, she smiled quietly and shook her head.

"Why don't you write to him, Jessy? He was always fond of you."