The Romance of a Plain Man

"I reckon I know where Bushrod Carrington lived, Theophilus. I've been there often enough. The house you're talking about is over on the other side of the hill, and was built by Robert."

"Well, I'm perfectly positive, George, that when I attended Robert in his last illness – "

"His last illness be hanged! I tell you what, Theophilus, you're getting entirely too opinionated for a man of your years. If it grows on you, you'll be having an attack of apoplexy next. Have you got a glass of iced water you can give Theophilus, Sally?"

"I'll get it," said young George, as Sally rose, and when he had gone out in response to her nod, the General, cooling a little, glanced with a sly wink from Sally to me. "You put me in mind of Bushrod's first flame, Bessy Randolph, my dear," he observed; "she was a great belle and beauty and half the men in Virginia proposed to her, they used to say, before she married Ned Peyton. 'No, I can't accept you for a husband,' the minx would reply, 'but I think you will do very well indeed as a hanger-on.' It looks as if you'd got George for a hanger-on, eh?"

"At present she's got him in place of a boy-of-all-jobs," I observed rightly, though a fierce misery worked in my mind.

"Well, she can't do better," said the doctor, as they prepared to leave. "Let me hear how you are, Ben. Don't eat too much till you get back your strength, and be sure to take your egg-nog three times a day. Come along, George, and we'll look up Robert's and Bushrod's graves in the churchyard. You'd better bring the palm-leaf fan, you'll probably need it."

They descended the curving steps leisurely, the General clinging to the railing on one side, and supported by George on the other. Then, at last, after many protestations of sympathy, and not a few anecdotes forgotten until the instant of departure revived the memory, the old grey horse, deciding suddenly that it was time for oats and the cool stable, started of his own accord up the street toward the churchyard. As the buggy passed out of sight, with the palm-leaf fan waving frantically when it turned the corner, George came up the steps again, and going indoors, brought out the little bundle of lace that he was to deliver to its owner on his way home.

"Keep up your pluck, Ben," he said cheerfully; and turning away, he looked at Sally with a long, thoughtful gaze as he held out his hand.

"Now, I'm going to wallop that boy," he remarked, after a minute. "Is there anything else? I'll be over to-morrow as soon as I can get off from the office."

"Nothing else," she replied; then, as he was moving away, she leaned forward, with that bloom and softness in her look which always came to her in moments when she was deeply stirred. "George!" she called, in a low voice, "George!"

He stopped and came back, meeting her vivid face with eyes that grew suddenly dark and gentle.

"It's just to say that I don't know what in the world I should have done without you," she said.

Again he turned from her, and this time he went quickly, without looking back, along the dusty street in the direction of the car line beyond the corner.

"You've been up too long, Ben, and you're as white as a sheet," said Sally, putting her hand on my arm. "Come, now, and lie down again while Aunt Euphronasia is cooking supper. I must iron Maggie Tyler's blouse as soon as it is dry."

The mention of Maggie Tyler's blouse was all I needed to precipitate me into the abyss above which I had stood. Too miserable to offer useless comment upon so obvious a tragedy, I followed her in silence back to the bedroom, where she placed me on the bed and flung a soft, thin coverlet over my prostrate body. She was still standing beside me, when Aunt Euphronasia hobbled excitedly into the room, and looking across the threshold, I discerned a tall, slender figure, shrouded heavily in black, hovering in the dim hall beyond.

"Hi! hi! honey, hyer's Miss Mitty done come ter see you!" exclaimed Aunt Euphronasia, in a burst of ecstasy.

Sally turned with a cry, and the next instant she was clasped in Miss Mitty's arms, with her head hidden in the rustling crape on the old lady's shoulder.

"I've just heard that you were in trouble, and that your husband was ill," said Miss Mitty, when she had seated herself in the chair by the window; "I came over at once, though I hadn't left the house for a year except to go out to Hollywood."

"It was so good of you, Aunt Mitty, so good of you," replied Sally, caressing her hand.

"If I'd only known sooner, I should have come. You are looking very badly, my child."

"Ben will be well quickly now, and then I can rest."

At this she turned toward me, and enquired in a gentle, reserved way about my illness, the nature of the fever, and the pain from which I had suffered.

"I hope you had the proper food, Ben," she said, calling me for the first time by my name; "I am sorry that I could not supply you with my chicken jelly. Dr. Theophilus tells me he considers it superior to any he has ever tried. – even to Mrs. Clay's."

"Comfort Sally, Miss Mitty, and it will do me more good than chicken jelly."

For a minute she sat looking at me kindly in silence. Then, as little Benjamin was brought, she took him upon her lap, and remarked that he was a beautiful baby, and that she already discerned in him the look of her Uncle Theodoric Fairfax.

"I should like you to come to my house as soon as you are able to move," she said presently, as she rose to go, and paused for a minute to bend over and kiss little Benjamin. "You will be more comfortable there, though the air is, perhaps, fresher over here."

I thanked her with tears in my eyes, and a resolve in my mind that at least Sally and the baby should accept the offer.

"There is a basket of old port in the sitting-room; I thought it might help to strengthen you," were her last words as she passed out, with Sally clinging to her arm, and the crape veil she still wore for Miss Matoaca rustling as she moved.

"Po' Miss Mitty has done breck so I 'ouldn't hev knowed her f'om de daid," observed Aunt Euphronasia, when the front door had closed and the sound of rapidly rolling wheels had passed down the street.

All night Sally and I talked of her, she resisting and I entreating that she should go to her old home for the rest of the summer.

"How can I leave you, Ben? How can you possibly do without me?"

"Don't bother about me. I'll manage to scrape along, somehow. There are two things that are killing me, Sally – the fact of owing money that I can't pay, and the thought of your toiling like a slave over my comfort."

"I'll go, then, if you will come with me."

"You know I can't come with you. She only asked me, you must realise, out of pity."

"Well, I shan't go a step without you," she said decisively at last, "for I don't see how on earth you would live through the summer if I did."

"I don't see either," I admitted honestly, looking at her, as she stood in the frame of the long window, the ruffles of her muslin dressing-gown blowing gently in the breeze which had sprung up in the garden. Beyond her there was a pale dimness, and the fresh, moist smell of the dew on the grass.

What she had said was the truth. How could I have lived through the summer if she had left me? Since the night after my failure, when we had come, for the first time, face to face with each other, I had leaned on her with all the weight of my crippled strength; and this weight, instead of crushing her to the earth, appeared to add vigour and buoyancy to her slender figure. Long afterwards, when my knowledge of her had come at last, not through love, but through bitterness, I wondered why I had not understood on that night, while I lay there watching her pale outline framed by the window. Love, not meat and drink, was her nourishment, and without love, though I were to surround her with all the fruits of the earth, she would still be famished. That she was strong, I had already learned. What I was still to discover was that this strength lay less in character than in emotion. Her very endurance – her power of sustained sympathy, of sacrifice – had its birth in some strangely idealised quality of passion – as though even suffering or duty was enkindled by this warm, clear flame that burned always within her.

As the light broke, we were awakened, after a few hours' restless sleep, by a sharp ring at the bell; and when she had slipped into her wrapper and answered it, she came back very slowly, holding an open note in her hands.

"Oh, poor Aunt Mitty, poor Aunt Mitty. She died all alone in her house last night, and the servants found her this morning."

"Well, the last thing she did was a kindness," I said gently.

"I'm glad of that, glad she came to see me, but, Ben, I can't help believing that it killed her. She had Aunt Matoaca's heart trouble, and the strain was too much." Then, as I held out my arms, she clung to me, weeping. "Never leave me alone, Ben – whatever happens, never, never leave me alone!"

A few days later, when Miss Mitty's will was opened, it was found that she had left to Sally her little savings of the last few years, which amounted to ten thousand dollars. The house, with her income, passed from her to the hospital endowed by Edmond Bland in a fit of rage with his youngest daughter; and the old lady's canary and the cheque, which fluttered some weeks later from the lawyer's letter, were the only possessions of hers that reached her niece.

"She left the miniature of me painted when I was a child to George," said Sally, with the cheque in her hand; "George was very good to her at the end. Did you ever notice my miniature, framed in pearls, that she wore sometimes, in place of grandmama's, at her throat?"

I had not noticed it, and the fact that I had never seen it, and was perfectly unaware whether or not it resembled Sally, seemed in some curious way to increase, rather than to diminish, the jealous pain at my heart. Why should George have been given this trifle, which was associated with Sally, and which I had never seen?

She leaned forward and the cheque fluttered into my plate.

"Take the money, Ben, and do what you think best with it," she added.

"It belongs to you. Wouldn't you rather keep it in bank as a nest-egg?"

"No, take it. I had everything of yours as long as you had anything."

"Then it goes into bank for you all the same," I replied, as I slipped the paper into my pocket.

An hour later, as I passed in the car down the long hill, I told myself that I would place the money to Sally's account, in order that she might draw on it until I had made good the strain of my illness. My first intention had been to go into the bank on my way to the office; but glancing at my watch as I left the car, I found that it was already after nine o'clock, and so returning the cheque to my pocket, I crossed the street, where I found the devil of temptation awaiting me in the person of Sam Brackett.