The Romance of a Plain Man

I sprang to my feet, while a hot wave swept over me at the thought that for a single dreadful instant I had been ashamed of my brother. Already I had pushed back my chair, but before I could move from my place, Sally had walked the length of the table, and stood, tall and queenly, between the flowering azaleas, with her hand outstretched. There was no shame in her face, no embarrassment, no hesitation. Before I could speak she had turned and come back to us, with her arm through President's, and never in my eyes had she appeared so noble, so high-bred, so thoroughly a Bland and a Fairfax as she did at that moment.

"Governor, this is my brother, Mr. Starr," she said in her low, clear voice. "Ben has not seen him for twenty years, so if you will pardon him, he will go upstairs with him to his room."

As I went toward her my glance swept the table for Jessy, and I saw that she was sitting perfectly still and colourless, crumbling a small piece of bread, while her eyes clung to the basket of roses and lilies.

"Well, Benjy boy!" exclaimed President, too full for speech, "and little Jessy!"

In spite of his awkwardness and his Sunday clothes, he looked so happy, so uplifted by the sincerity of his affection above any false feeling of shame, that the tears sprang to my eyes as I clasped his hand.

The governor had risen to speak to him, the General had done likewise. By their side Sally stood with a smile on her face and her hand on the table. She was a Bland, after all, and the racial instinct within her had risen to meet the crisis. They recognised it, I saw, and they, whose blood was as blue as hers, responded generously to the call. Not one had failed her! Then my eyes fell on Jessy, sitting cold and silent, while she crumbled her bit of bread.

CHAPTER XXII

THE MAN AND THE CLASS

"I oughtn't to have done it, Benjy," said President, following me with diffidence under the waving palm branches and up the staircase.

"Nonsense, President," I answered; "I'm awfully glad you've come. Only if I'd known about it, I'd have met you at the station."

"No, I oughtn't to have done it, Benjy," he repeated humbly, standing in a dejected attitude in the centre of the guest room next to Jessy's. He had entered nervously, as if he were stepping on glass, and when I motioned to a chair he shook his head and glanced uneasily at the delicate chintz covering.

"I'd better not sit down. I'm feared I'll hurt it."

"It's made to be sat in. You aren't going to stand up in the middle of the room all night, old fellow, are you?"

At this he appeared to hesitate, and a pathetic groping showed itself in his large, good-humoured face.

"You see, I've been down in the mines," he said, "an' anything so fancy makes my flesh crawl."

"I wish you'd give up that work. It's a shame to have you do it when I've got more money than I can find investments for."

"I'm a worker, Benjy, and I'll die a worker. Pa wa'nt a worker, and that's why he took to drink."

"Well, sit down now, and make yourself at home. I've got to go back downstairs, but I'll come up again the very minute that it's over."

Pushing him, in spite of his stubborn, though humble, resistance, into the depths of the chintz-covered chair, I went hurriedly back to the dinner-table, and took my seat beside Mrs. Tyler, who remarked with a tact which won me completely: —

"Mrs. Starr has been telling us such interesting things about your brother. He has a very fine head."

"By George, I'm glad I shook his hand," said the General, in his loud, kindly way. "Bring him to see me, Ben, I like a worker."

The terrible minute in which I had sat there, paralysed by the shame of acknowledging him, was still searing my mind. As I met Sally's eyes over the roses and lilies, I wondered if she had seen my cowardliness as I had seen Jessy's, and been repelled by it? When the dinner was over, and the last guest had gone, I asked myself the question again while I went upstairs to bring my brother from his retirement. As I opened the door, he started up from the chair in which I had placed him, and began rubbing his eyes as he followed me timidly out of the room. At the table Sally seated herself opposite to him, and talked in her simple, kindly manner while he ate his dinner.

"Pour his wine, Ben," she said, dismissing the butler, "there are too many frivolities, aren't there? I like a clear space, too."

Turning toward him she pushed gently away the confusing decorations, and removed the useless number of forks from beside his plate. If the way he ate his soup and drank his wine annoyed her, there was no hint of it in her kind eyes and her untroubled smile. She, who was sensitive to the point of delicacy, I knew, watched him crumble his bread into his green turtle, and gulp down his sherry, with a glance which apparently was oblivious of the thing at which it looked. Jessy shrank gradually away, confessing presently that she had a headache and would like to go upstairs to bed; and when she kissed President's cheek, I saw aversion written in every line of her shrinking figure. Yet opposite to him sat Sally, who was a Bland and a Fairfax, and not a tremor, not the flicker of an eyelash, disturbed her friendly and charming expression. What was the secret of that exquisite patience, that perfect courtesy, which was confirmed by the heart, not by the lips? Did the hidden cause of it lie in the fact that it was not a manner, after all, but the very essence of a character, whose ruling spirit was exhaustless sympathy?

"I've told Benjy, ma'am," said President, selecting the largest fork by some instinct for appropriateness, "that I know I oughtn't to have done it."

"To have done what?" repeated Sally kindly.

"That I oughtn't to have come in on a party like that dressed as I am, and I so plain and uneddicated."

"You mustn't worry," she answered, bending forward in all the queenliness of her braided wreath and her bare shoulders, "you mustn't worry – not for a minute. It was natural that you should come to your brother at once, and, of course, we want you to stay with us."

I had never seen her fail when social intuition guided her, and she did not fail now. He glanced down at his clothes in a pleased, yet hesitating, manner.

"These did very well on Sunday in Pocahontas," he said, "but somehow they don't seem to suit here; I reckon so many flowers and lights kind of dazzle my eyes."

"They do perfectly well," answered Sally, speaking in a firm, direct way as if she were talking to a child; "but if you would feel more comfortable in some of Ben's clothes, he has any number of them at your service. He is about your height, is he not?"

"To think of little Benjy growin' so tall," he remarked with a kind of ecstasy, and when we went into the library for a smoke, he insisted upon measuring heights with me against the ledge of the door. Then, alone with me and the cheerful crackling of the log fire, his embarrassment disappeared, and he began to ask a multitude of eager questions about myself and Jessy and my marriage.

"And so pa died," he remarked sadly, between the long whiffs of his pipe.

"I'm not sure it wasn't the best thing he ever did," I responded.

"Well, you see, Benjy, he wa'nt a worker, and when a man ain't a worker there's mighty little to stand between him and drink. Now, ma, she was a worker."

"And we got it from her. That's why we hate to be idle, I suppose."

"Did it ever strike you, Benjy," he enquired solemnly, after a minute, "that in the marriage of ma and pa the breeches were on the wrong one of 'em? Pa wa'nt much of a man, but he would have made a female that we could have been proud of. With all the good working qualities, we never could be proud of ma when we considered her as a female."

"Well, I don't know, but I think she was the best we ever had."

"We are proud of Jessy," he pursued reflectively.

"Yes, we are proud of Jessy," I repeated, and as I uttered the words, I remembered her beautiful blighted look, while she sat cold and silent, crumbling her bit of bread.

"And we are proud of you, Benjy," he added, "but you ain't any particular reason to be proud of me. You can't be proud of a man that ain't had an eddication."

"Well, the education doesn't make the man, you know."

"It does a good deal towards it. The stuffing goes a long way with the goose, as poor ma used to say. Do you ever think what ma would have been if she'd had an eddication? An eddication and breeches would have made a general of her. It must take a powerful lot of patience to stand being born a female."

He took a wad of tobacco from his pocket, eyed it timidly, and after glancing at the tiled hearth, put it back again.

"You know what I would do if I were a rich man, Benjy?" he said; "I'd buy a railroad."

"You'd have to be a very rich man, indeed, to do that."

"It's a little dead-beat road, the West Virginia and Wyanoke. I overheard two gentlemen talking about it yesterday in Pocahontas, and one of 'em had been down to look at those worked-out coal fields at Wyanoke. 'If I wa'nt in as many schemes as I could float, I'd buy up a control of that road,' said the one who had been there, 'you mark my words, there's better coal in those fields than has ever come out of 'em.' They called him Huntley, and he said he'd been down with an expert."

"Huntley?" I caught at the name, for he was one of the shrewdest promoters in the South. "If he thinks that, why didn't he get control of the road himself?"

"The other wanted him to. He said the time would come when they tapped the coal fields that the Great South Midland and Atlantic would want the little road as a feeder."

"So he believed the Wyanoke coal fields weren't worked out, eh?"