The Romance of a Plain Man

"It's a bad way to begin. Women have got it in their blood, and I remember my poor mother used to say she never felt that a dollar was worth anything until she spent it. If I were you, I'd pull up and go slowly, but it's mighty hard to do after you've once started at a gallop."

"I don't think I'll have any trouble, but I hate like the deuce to speak of it to Sally."

"That's your damned delicacy. It puts me in mind of my cousin, Jenny Tyler, who married that scamp who used to throw his boots at her. Once when she was a girl she stayed with us for a summer, and old Judge Lacy, one of the ugliest men of his day, fell over head and heels in love with her. She couldn't endure the sight of him, and yet, if you'll believe my word, though she was as modest as an angel, I actually found him kissing her one day in a summer-house. 'Bless my soul, Jenny!' I exclaimed, 'why didn't you tell that old baboon to stop hugging you and behave himself?' 'O Cousin George,' she replied, blushing the colour of a cherry, 'I didn't like to mention it.' Now, that's the kind of false modesty you've got, Ben."

"Well, you see, General," I responded when he had finished his sly chuckle, "I've always felt that money was the only thing that I had to offer."

"You may feel that way, Ben, but I don't believe that Sally does. My honest opinion is that it means a lot more to you than it does to her. There never was a Bland yet that didn't look upon money as a vulgar thing. I've known Sally's grandfather to refuse to invite a man to his house when the only objection he had to him was that he was too rich to be a gentleman. If you think it's wealth or luxury or their old house that the Blands pride themselves on, you haven't learned a thing about 'em in spite of the fact that you've married into the family. What they're proud of is that they can do without any of these things; they've got something else – whatever it is – that they consider a long sight better. Miss Mitty Bland would still have it if she went in rags and did her own cooking, and it's this, not any material possessions, that makes her so terribly important. Look here, now, you take my advice and go home and tell Sally to stop spending money. How's that boy of yours? Is he wanting to become a bank president already?"

The old grey horse, rounding the corner at an amble, came suddenly to a stop as he recognised the half-grown negro urchin waiting upon the pavement. As if moved by a mechanical spring, the General's expression changed at once from its sly and jolly good nature to the look of capable activity which marked the successful man of affairs. The twinkle in his little bloodshot eyes narrowed to a point of steel, the loose lines of his mouth, which was the mouth of a generous libertine, grew instantly sober, and even his crimson neck, sprawling over his puffy, magenta-coloured tie, stiffened into an appearance of pompous dignity.

"Look sharp about the Cumberland and Tidewater, Ben," he remarked as he turned to limp painfully into the railroad office. Then the glass doors swung together behind him, and he forgot my existence, while I crossed the street in a rush and entered the Union Bank, which was a block farther down on the opposite side.

On the way home that afternoon, I told myself with determination that I would tell Sally frankly about the money I had lost; but when a little later she slipped her hand into my arm, and led me into the nursery to show me a trunk filled with baby's clothes that had come down from New York, my courage melted to air, and I could not bring myself to dispel the pretty excitement with which she laid each separate tiny garment upon the bed.

"Oh, of course, you don't enjoy them, Ben, as I do, but isn't that little embroidered cloak too lovely?"

"Lovely, dear, only I've had a bad day, and I'm tired."

"Poor boy, I know you are. Here, we'll put them away. But first there's something really dreadful I've got to tell you."

"Dreadful, Sally?"

"Yes, but it isn't about us. Do you know, I honestly believe that Jessy intends to marry Mr. Cottrel."

"What? That old rocking-horse? Why, he's a Methusalah, and knock-kneed into the bargain."

"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters to her except clothes. I've heard of women who sold themselves for clothes, and I believe she's one of them."

"Well, we're an eccentric family," I said wearily, "and she's the worst."

At any other time the news would probably have excited my indignation, but as I sat there, in the wicker rocking-chair, by the nursery fire, I was too exhausted to resent any manifestation of the family spirit. The last week had been a terrible strain, and there were months ahead which I knew would demand the exercise of every particle of energy that I possessed. In the afternoon there was to be a meeting of the directors of the bank, called to discuss the advancing of further loans to the Cumberland and Tidewater Railroad, and at eight o'clock I had promised to work for several hours with Bradley, my secretary. To go slowly now was impossible. My only hope was that by going fast enough I might manage to save what remained of the situation.

As the winter passed I went earlier to my office and came up later. Failure succeeded failure in Wall Street, and the whole country began presently to send back echoes of the prolonged crash. The Cumberland and Tidewater Railroad, to which we had refused a further loan, went into the hands of a receiver, and the Great South Midland and Atlantic immediately bought up the remnants at its own price. The General, who had been jubilant about the purchase, relapsed into melancholy a week later over the loss of "a good third" of his personal income.

"I'm an old fool or I'd have stopped dabbling in speculations and put away a nest-egg for my old age," he remarked, wiping his empurpled lids on his silk handkerchief. "No man over fifty ought to be trusted to gamble in stocks. Thank God, I'm the one to suffer, however, and not the road. If there's a more solid road in the country, Ben, than the South Midland, I've got to hear of it. It's big, but it's growing – swallowing up everything that comes in its way, like a regular boa constrictor. Think what it was when I came into it immediately after the war; and to-day it's one of the few roads that is steadily increasing its earnings in spite of this blamed panic."

"You worked regeneration, General, as I've often told you."

"Well, I'm too old to see what it's coming to. I hope a good man will step into my place after I'm gone. I'm sometimes sorry you didn't stick by me, Ben."

He spoke of the great road in a tone of regretful sentiment which I had never found in his allusions to his lost Matoaca. The romance of his life, after all, was not a woman, but a railroad, and his happiest memory was, I believe, not the Sunday upon which he had stood beside the rose-lined bonnet of his betrothed and sung lustily out of the same hymn-book, but the day when the stock of the Great South Midland and Atlantic had sold at 180 in the open market.

"I'll tell you what, my boy," he remarked with a quiver of his lower lip, which hung still farther away from his bloodless gum, "a woman may go back on you, and the better the woman the more likely she is to do it, – but a road won't, – no, not if it is a good road."

"Well, I'm not getting much return out of the West Virginia and Wyanoke just now," I replied. "It's no fun being a little road at the mercy of a big one when the big one is a boa constrictor. Even if you get a fair division of the rates, you don't get your cars when you want them."

"The moral of that," returned the General, with a chuckle, "is, to quote from my poor old mammy again, 'Don't hatch until you're ready to hatch whole.'"

We parted with a laugh, and I dismissed the affairs of the little railroad as I entered my office at the bank, where my private wire immediately ticked off the news of a state of panic in the money market. That was in February, and it was not until the end of March that the ice on which I was walking cracked under my feet and I went through.

CHAPTER XXIV

IN WHICH I GO DOWN

I had just risen from breakfast on the last day of March when I was called to the telephone by Cummins, the cashier of the bank.

"Things are going pretty queer down here. Looks as if a run were beginning. Some old fool started it after reading about that failure of the Darlington Trust Company in New York. Wish you'd hurry."

"Call up the directors, and look here! – pay out all deposits slowly until I get there."

The telephone rang off, and picking up my hat, I went down the front steps to the carriage, which had been ordered by Sally for an early appointment. As I stepped in, she appeared in her hat and coat and joined me.

"Drive to the bank, Micah," I said, "I want to get there like lightning."

"Can you wait till I speak to mammy? She is bringing the baby."

For the first time since our marriage my nerves got the better of me, and I answered her sharply.

"No, I can't wait – not a minute, not a second. Drive on, Micah."

In obedience to my commands, Micah touched the horses, and as we sped down Franklin Street, Sally looked at me with an expression which reminded me of the faint wonder under the fixed smile about Miss Mitty's mouth.

"What's the matter, Ben? Are you working too hard?" she enquired.

"I'm tired and I'm anxious. Do you realise that we are living in the midst of a panic?"

"Are we?" she asked quietly, and arranged the fur rug over her knees.

"Do you mean to tell me you hadn't heard it?" I demanded, in pure amazement that the thing which had possessed me to madness for three months should have escaped the consciousness of the wife with whom I lived.

"How was I to hear of it? You never told me, and I seldom read the papers now since the baby came. Of course I knew something was wrong. You were looking so badly and so much older."

To me it had needed no telling, because it had become suddenly the most obvious fact in the world in which I moved. Only a fool would gaze up at the sky during a storm burst and remark to a bystander, "It thunders." Yet even now I saw that what she realised was not the gravity of the financial crisis, but its injurious effect upon my health and my appearance.

"You've been on too great a strain," she remarked sympathetically; "when it's all over you must come away and we'll go to Florida in the General's car."

To Florida! and at that instant I was struggling in the grip of failure – the failure of the successful financier, which is of all failures the hardest. Not a few retrenchments, not the economy of a luxury here and there, but ultimate poverty was the thing that I faced while I sat beside her on the soft cushions under the rich fur rug. One by one the familiar houses whirled by me. I saw the doors open and shut, the people come out of them, the sunshine fall through the budding trees on the sidewalk; and the houses and the moving people and the budding trees, all seemed to me detached and unreal, as if they stood apart somewhere in a world of quiet, while I was sucked in by the whirlpool. Though I lifted my voice and called aloud to them, I felt that the people I passed would still go quietly in and out of the opening doors in the placid spring sunshine.

"There's Bonny Page," said Sally, waving her hand; "she's to marry Ned Marshall next month, you know, and they are going to Europe. Did you notice that baby in the carriage – the one with blue bows and the Irish lace afghan? – it is Bessy Munford's, – the handsomest in town, they say, after little Benjamin."

The sight of the baby carriage, with its useless blue fripperies, trundled on the pavement under the budding trees, had aroused in me a sudden ridiculous anger, as though it represented the sinful extravagance of an entire nation. That silly carriage with its blue ribbons and its lace coverlet! And over the whole country factory after factory was shutting down, and thousands of hungry mothers and children were sitting on door-steps in this same sunshine. My nerves were bad. It had been months since I had a good night's sleep, and I knew that in the condition of my temper a trifle might be magnified out of all due proportion to its relative significance.

The horses stopped at the bank, and Sally leaned out to bow smilingly to one of the directors, who was coming along the sidewalk.

"I never saw so many people about here, Ben," she remarked; "it looks exactly as if it were a theatre. Ah, there's the General now going into his office. He hobbles so badly, doesn't he? When do you think you'll be home?"

"I don't know," I returned shortly, "perhaps at midnight – perhaps next week."