The Romance of a Plain Man

"Thar, now, don't think of disturbin' him, Mrs. Starr. He ain't the least bit in my way. I can look right over his head," I heard murmured over me as I slid blissfully into unconsciousness.

What happened after this I was never able to remember, for when I came clearly awake again, we had reached our door, and my mother was shaking me in the effort to make me stand on my feet.

"He's gone and slept through the whole thing," she remarked irritably to President, while I stumbled after them across the pavement, with the fringed ends of my blanket shawl rustling the leaves.

"He's too little. You might have let me go, ma," replied President, as he dragged me, sleepy eyes, ruffled flaxen hair, and trailing shawl over the doorstep.

"An' you're too big," retorted my mother, removing the long black pins from her veil, and holding them in her mouth while she carefully smoothed and folded the lengths of crape. "You could never have squeezed in between us, an' as it was Mrs. Kidd almost overlaid Benjy. But you didn't miss much," she hastened to assure him, "I declar' I thought at one time we'd never get on it all went so slowly."

Having placed her bonnet and veil in the tall white bandbox upon the table, she hurried off to prepare our dinner, while President urged me in an undertone to "sham sick" that afternoon so that he wouldn't have to take me out for an airing on the hill.

"But I want to go," I responded selfishly, wide awake at the prospect. "I want to see the old Adams house where the little girl lives."

"If you go I can't play checkers, an' it's downright mean. What do you care about little girls? They ain't any good."

"But this little girl has got a drunken father."

"Well, you won't see him anyway, so what is the use?"

"She lives in a big house an' it's got a big garden – as big as that!" I stretched out my arms in a vain attempt to impress his imagination, but he merely looked scornful and swore a mighty vow that he'd "be jiggered if he'd keep on playin' nurse-girl to a muff."

At the time he put my pleading sternly aside, but a couple of hours later, when the afternoon was already waning, he relented sufficiently to take me out on the ragged hill, which was covered thickly with pokeberry, yarrow, and stunted sumach. Before our feet the ground sank gradually to the sparkling river, and farther away I could see the silhouette of an anchored vessel etched boldly against the rosy clouds of the sunset.

As I stood there, holding fast to his hand, in the high wind that blew up from the river, a stout gentleman, leaning heavily on a black walking-stick, with a big gold knob at the top, came panting up the slope and paused beside us, with his eyes on the western sky. He was hale, handsome, and ruddy-faced, with a bunch of iron-grey whiskers on either cheek, and a vivacious and merry eye which seemed to catch at a twinkle whenever it met mine. His rounded stomach was spanned by a massive gold watch-chain, from which dangled a bunch of seals that delighted my childish gaze.

"It's a fine view," he observed pleasantly, patting my shoulder as if I were in some way responsible for the river, the anchored vessel, and the rosy sunset. "I moved up-town as soon as the war ended, but I still manage to crawl back once in a while to watch the afterglow."

"Where does the sun go," I asked, "when it slips way down there on the other side of the river?"

The gentleman smiled benignly, and I saw from his merry glance that he did not share my mother's hostility to the enquiring mind.

"Well, I shouldn't be surprised if it went to the wrong side of the world for little boys and girls over there to get up by," he replied.

"May I go there, too, when I'm big?"

"To the wrong side of the world? You may, who knows?"

"Have you ever been there? What is it like?"

"Not yet, not yet, but there's no telling. I've been across the ocean, though, and that's pretty far. I went once in a ship that ran through the blockade and brought in a cargo of Bibles."

"What did you want with so many Bibles? We've got one. It has gilt clasps."

"Want with the Bibles! Why, every one of these Bibles, my boy, may have saved a soul."

"Has our Bible saved a soul? An' whose soul was it? It stays on our centre table, an' my name's in it. I've seen it."

"Indeed! and what may your name be?"

"Ben Starr. That's my name. What is yours? Is yo' name in the Bible? Does everybody's name have to be in the Bible if they're to be saved? Who put them in there? Was it God or the angels? If I blot my name out can I still go to heaven? An' if yours isn't in there will you have to be damned? Have you ever been damned an' what does it feel like?"

"Shut up, Benjy, or ma'll wallop you," growled President, squeezing my hand so hard that I cried aloud.

"Ah, he's a fine boy, a promising boy, a remarkable boy," observed the gentleman, with one finger in his waistcoat pocket. "Wouldn't you like to grow up and be President, my enquiring young friend?"

"No, sir, I'd rather be God," I replied, shaking my head.

All the gentleman's merry grey eyes seemed to run to sparkles.

"Ah, there's nothing, after all, like the true American spirit," he said, patting my shoulder. Then he laughed so heartily that his gold-rimmed eye-glasses fell from his eyes and dangled in the air at the end of a silk cord. "I'm afraid your aspiration is too lofty for my help," he said, "but if you should happen to grow less ambitious as you grow older, then remember, please, that my name is General Bolingbroke."

"Why, you're the president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, sir!" exclaimed President, admiring and embarrassed.

The General sighed, though even I could see that this simple tribute to his fame had not left him unmoved. "Ten years ago I was the man who tried to save Johnston's army, and to-day I am only a railroad president," he answered, half to himself; "times change and fames change almost as quickly. When all is said, however, there may be more lasting honour in building a country's trade than in winning a battle. I'll have a tombstone some day and I want written on it, 'He brought help to the sick land and made the cotton flower to bloom anew.' My name is General Bolingbroke," he added, with his genial and charming smile. "You will not forget it?"

I assured him that I should not, and that if it could be done, I'd try to have it written in our Bible with gilt clasps, at which he thanked me gravely as he shook my hand.

"An' I think now I'd rather be president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, sir," I concluded.

"Young man, I fear you're with the wind," he said, laughing, and added, "I've a nephew just about your age and at least a head shorter, what do you think of that?"

"Has he a kite?" I enquired eagerly. "I have, an' a top an' ten checkers an' a big balloon."

"Have you, indeed? Well, my poor boy is not so well off, I regret to say. But don't you think your prosperity is excessive considering the impoverished condition of the country?"

The big words left me gasping, and fearing that I had been too boastful for politeness, I hastened to inform him that "although the balloon was very big, it was also bu'sted, which made a difference."

"Ah, it is, is it? Well, that does make a difference."

"If your boy hasn't any checkers I'll give him half of mine," I added with a gulp.

With an elaborate flourish the General drew out a stiffly starched pocket handkerchief and blew his nose. "That's a handsome offer and I'll repeat it without fail," he said.

Then he shook hands again and marched down the hill with his gold-headed stick tapping the ground.

"Now you'll come and trot home, I reckon," said President, when he had disappeared.

But the spirit of revolt had lifted its head within me, for through a cleft in the future, I saw myself already as the president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, with a jingling bunch of seals and a gold-headed stick.

"I ain't goin' that way," I said, "I'm goin' home by the old Adams house where the little girl lives."

"No, you ain't either. I'll tell ma on you."

"I don't care. If you don't take me home by the old Adams house, you'll have to carry me every step of the way, an' I'll make myself heavy."

For a long minute President wrinkled his brows and thought hard in silence. Then an idea appeared to penetrate his slow mind, and he grasped me by the shoulder and shook me until I begged him to stop.

"If I take you home that way will you promise to sham sick to-morrow, so I shan't have to bring you out?"