The Romance of a Plain Man

"Have I been very ill, Sally?"

"Very ill. It was the long mental strain, followed by the intense heat. At one time we feared that a blood vessel was broken. Now, put everything out of your mind, and get well."

She had taken off her gingham apron, and was wearing one of her last summer's dresses of flowered organdie. I remembered that I had always liked it because it had blue roses over it.

"How can I get well when I know that you have been starving?"

"But we haven't been. We've had everything on earth we wanted."

"Then thank God you got help. Whom did you go to?"

Putting the empty glass aside, she began feeding me spoonfuls of broth, with her arm under my pillow.

"If you will be bad and insist upon knowing – I didn't go to anybody. You said you couldn't bear being helped, you know."

"I said it – oh, darling – but I didn't think of this!"

"Well, I thought of it, anyway, and I wasn't going to do while you were ill and helpless what you didn't want me to do when you were well."

"You mean you told nobody all these weeks?"

"Well, I told one or two people, but I didn't accept charity from them. The General was away, you know, but some people from the office came over with offers of help – and I told them we needed nothing. Dr. Theophilus was too far away to treat you, but he has come almost every day with a pitcher of Mrs. Clay's chicken broth. Oh, we've prospered, Ben, there's no doubt of that, we've prospered!"

"How soon may I get up?"

"Not for three weeks, and it will be another three weeks even if you're good, before you can go back to the office."

A sob rose in my throat, but I bit it back fiercely before it passed my lips.

"Oh, Sally, my darling, why did you marry me?"

"You cruel boy," she returned cheerfully, as she smoothed my pillows, "when you know that if I hadn't married you there wouldn't be any little Benjamin in the world."

After this the slow days dragged away, while I consumed chicken broth and milk punches with a frantic desire to get back my strength. Only to be on my feet again, and able to lift the burden from Sally's shoulders! Only to drive that tired look from her eyes, and that patient, divine smile from her lips! I watched her with jealous longing while I lay there, helpless as a fallen tree, and I saw that she grew daily thinner, that the soft redness never left her small, childlike hands, that three fine, nervous wrinkles had appeared between her arched eyebrows. Something was killing her, while I, the man who had sworn before God to cherish her, was but an additional burden on her fragile shoulders. And yet how I loved her! Never had she seemed to me more lovely, more desirable, than she did as she moved about my bed in her gingham apron, with the anxious smile on her lips, and the delicate furrows deepening between her eyebrows.

"How soon? How soon, Sally?" I asked almost hourly, kissing the scar on her wrist when she bent over me.

"Be patient, dear."

"I am trying to be patient for your sake, but oh, it's devilish hard!"

"I know it is, Ben. Another week, and you will be up."

"Another week, and this killing you!"

"It isn't killing me. If it were killing me, do you think I could laugh? And you hear me laugh?"

"Yes, I hear you laugh, and it breaks my heart as I lie here. If I'm ever up, Sally, if I'm ever well, I'll make you go to bed and I will slave over you."

"There are many things I'd enjoy more, dear. Going to bed isn't my idea of happiness."

"Then you shall sit on a cushion and eat nothing but strawberries and cream."

"That sounds better. Well, there's something I've got to see about, so I'll leave you with Aunt Euphronasia to look after you. The doctor says you may have a cup of tea if you're good. We'll make a party together."

An hour or two later, when the afternoon sunshine was shut out by the green blinds, and the room was filled with a gentle droning sound from the humming-birds at the jessamine, she drew up the small wicker tea table to my bedside, and we made the party with merriment. Her eyes were tired, the three fine nervous wrinkles had deepened between her arched eyebrows, and the soft redness I had objected to, covered her hands; yet that spirit of gaiety, which had seemed to me to resemble the spirit of the bird singing in the old grey house, still showed in her voice and her smile. As she brewed the tea in the little brown tea-pot and poured it into the delicate cups, with the faded pattern of moss rosebuds around the brim, I wondered, half in a dream, from what inexhaustible source she drew this courage which faced life, not with endurance, but with blitheness. Were the ghosts of the dead Blands and Fairfaxes from whom she had sprung fighting over again their ancient battles in their descendant?

"This is a nice party, isn't it?" she asked, when she had brought the hot buttered toast from the kitchen and cut it into very small slices on my plate; "the tea smells deliciously. I paid a dollar and a quarter for a pound of it this morning."

"If I'm ever rich again you shall pay a million and a quarter, if you want to."

The charming archness awoke in her eyes, while she looked at me over the brim of the cup.

"Isn't this just as nice as being rich, Ben?" she asked; "I am really, you know, a far better cook than Aunt Mehitable."

"All the same I'd rather live on bread and water than have you do it," I answered.

She lifted her hand, pushing the heavy hair from her forehead, and my gaze fell on the jagged scar on her wrist. Then, as she caught my glance, her arm dropped suddenly under the table, and she pulled her loose muslin sleeve into place.

"Does the burn hurt you, Sally?"

"Not now – it is quite healed. At first it smarted a little."

"Darling, how did you do it?"

"I've forgotten. On the stove, I think."

I fell back on the pillow, too faint, in spite of the tea I had taken, to follow a thought in which there was so sharp and so incessant a pang. Before my eyes the little table, with its white cloth and its fragile china service, decorated with moss rosebuds, appeared to dissolve into some painful dream distance, in which the sound of the humming-birds at the jessamine grew gradually louder.

Six days longer I remained in bed, too weak to get into my clothes, or to stand on my feet, but at the end of that time I was permitted to struggle to the square of sunlight by the window, where I sat for an hour with the warm breeze from the garden blowing into my face. For the first day or two I was unable to rise from the deep chintz-covered chair, in which Aunt Euphronasia and Sally had placed me; but one afternoon, when the old negress had returned to the kitchen, and Sally had gone out on an errand, I disobeyed their orders and crawled out on the porch, where the scent of the jessamine seemed a part of the summer sunshine. The next day I ventured as far as the kitchen steps, and found Aunt Euphronasia plucking a chicken for my broth, with little Benjamin asleep in his carriage at her side.

"Aunt Euphronasia, do you know where Sally goes every afternoon?" I enquired.

"Hi! Marse Ben, ain't un 'oman erbleeged ter teck her time off de same ez a man?" she demanded indignantly. "She cyarn' be everlastin'ly a-settin' plum at yo' elbow."

"You know perfectly well I'm not such a brute as to be complaining, mammy."

"Mebbe you ain't, honey, but hit sounds dat ar way ter me."

"If I could only make sure she'd gone to walk, I'd be jolly glad."

"Ef'n you ax me," she retorted contemptuously, "she ain't de sort, suh, dat's gwineter traipse jes' fur de love er traipsing.'"

There was small comfort, I saw, to be had from her, so turning away, while she resumed her plucking, I crawled slowly back through the bedroom into the hall, and along the hall to the front door, which stood open. Here the dust of the street rose like steam to my nostrils, and the stone steps and the brick pavement were thickly coated. A watering-cart turned the corner, scattering a refreshing spray, and behind it came a troop of thirsty dogs, licking greedily at the water before it sank into the dust. The foliage of the trees was scorched to a livid shade, and the ends of the leaves curled upward as if a flame had blown by them. Down the street, as I stood there, came the old familiar cry from a covered wagon: "Water-million! Hyer's yo' watermillion fresh f'om de vine!"

Clinging to the iron railing, which burned my hand, I descended the steps with trembling limbs, and stood for a minute in the patch of shade at the bottom. A negro, seated on the curbing, was drinking the juice from a melon rind, and he looked up at me with rolling eyes, his gluttonous red lips moving in rapture.

"Dish yer's a moughty good melon, Marster," he said, and returned to his feast.