The Romance of a Plain Man

"The matter is, Ben," he replied, holding himself in with an effort, "that you've missed being a fool only by being a genius instead."

Then turning away, as if his temper had got the better of him, he strode back through a clump of trees on the lawn, while I went up the steps again, and crossing the cold hall, entered the dismantled drawing-room, where a bright log fire was burning.

Sally was sitting on the hearth, half hidden by the high arms of the chair, and as I closed the door behind me, she rose and stood looking at me with an expression of surprise. So had Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca looked in the firelight on that November afternoon when Sally and I had gone in together.

"Why, Ben!" she said quietly, "I thought you were in Washington!"

"I got home this morning and found your note. Sally, what is the trouble?"

"You came after me?"

"I came after you. The General went wild and imagined that there had been an accident, or George had run off with you."

"Then the General sent you?"

"Nobody sent me. I was leaving the house when he found me."

She had not moved toward me, and for some reason, I still stood where I had stopped short in the centre of the room, kept back by the reserve, the detachment in her expression.

"You came believing that George and I had gone off together?" she asked, and there was a faint hostility in her voice.

"Of course I didn't believe it. I'm not a fool if I am an ass. But if I had believed it," I added passionately, "it would have made no difference. I'd have come after you if you'd gone off with twenty Georges."

"Well, there's only one," she said, "and I did go off with him."

"It makes no difference."

"We left Richmond at ten o'clock yesterday, and we've been here ever since."

"What does that matter?"

"You mean it doesn't matter that I came away with George and spent twenty-four hours?"

"I mean that nothing matters – not if you'd spent twenty-four years."

"I suppose it doesn't," she responded quietly, and there was a curious remoteness, a hollowness in the sound of the words. "When one comes to see things as they are, nothing really matters. It is all just the same."

Her face looked unsubstantial and wan in the firelight, and so ethereal, so fleshless, appeared her figure, that it seemed to me I could see through it to the shining of the flames before which she stood.

"I can't talk, Sally," I said, "I am not good at words, I believe I'm more than half a fool as George has just told me – but – but – I want you – I've always wanted you – I've never in my heart wanted anything in the world but you – "

"I don't suppose even that matters much," she answered wearily, "but if you care to know, Ben, George and Bonny found me when I was alone and – and very unhappy, and they brought me with them when they came down to hunt. They are hunting now."

"You were alone and unhappy?" I said, for George Bolingbroke and Bonny Marshall had faded from me into the region of utterly indifferent things.

"It was that I wanted to tell you the morning you couldn't wait," she returned gently; "I had kept it from you the night before because I saw that you were so tired and needed sleep. But – but I had seen two doctors, both had told me that I was ill, that I had some trouble of the spine, that I might be an invalid – a useless invalid, if I lived, that – that there would never be another child – that – "

Her voice faltered and ceased, for crossing the room with a bound, I had gathered her to my breast, and was bending over her in an intensity, a violence of love, crushing back her hands on her bosom, while I kissed her face, her throat, her hair, her dress even, as I had never kissed her in the early days of our marriage. The passion of happiness in that radiant prime was pale and bloodless beside the passion of sorrow which shook me now.

"Stop, stop, Ben," she said, struggling to be free, "let me go. You are hurting me."

"I shall never stop, I shall never let you go," I answered, "I shall hold you forever, even if it hurts you."

CHAPTER XXXV

THE ULTIMATE CHOICE

We carried her home next day in George's motor car, ploughing with difficulty over the heavy roads, which in a month's time would have become impassable. A golden morning had followed the rain; the sun shone clear, the wind sang in the bronzed tree-tops, and on the low hills to the right of us, the harvested corn ricks stood out illuminated against a deep blue sky. When the brown-winged birds flew, as they sometimes did, across the road, her eyes measured their flight with a look in which there was none of the radiant impulse I had seen on that afternoon when she gazed after the flying swallows. She spoke but seldom, and then it was merely to thank me when I wrapped the fur rug about her, or to reply to a question of George's with a smile that had in it a touching helplessness, a pathetic courage. And this helplessness, this courage, brought to my memory the sound of her voice when she had called George's name aloud in her terror. Even after we had reached home, and when she and I stood alone, for a minute, before the fire in her room, I felt still that something within her – something immaterial and flamelike that was her soul – turned from me, seeking always a clearer and a diviner air.

"Are you in pain now, Sally? What can I do for you?" I asked.

"No, I am better. Don't worry," she answered.

Then, because there seemed nothing further to say, I stood in silence, while she moved from me, as if the burden of her weight was too much for her, and sank down on the couch, hiding her face in the pillows.

Two days later there came down a great specialist from New York for a consultation; and while he was upstairs in her closed bedroom, I walked up and down the floor of the library, over the Turkish rugs, between the black oak bookcases, as I had walked in that other house on the night of my failure. How small a thing that seemed to me now compared with this! What I remembered best from that night was the look in her face when she had turned and run back to me with her arms outstretched, and the warm, flattened braid of her hair that had brushed my cheek. I understood at last, as I walked restlessly back and forth, waiting for the verdict from the closed room, that I had been happy then – if I had only known it! The warmth stifled me, and going to the window, I flung it open, and leaned out into the mild November weather. In the street below leaves were burning, and while the odour floated up to me I saw again her red shoes dancing over the sunken graves in the churchyard.

The door opened above, there was the sound of a slow heavy tread on the staircase, and I went forward to meet the great specialist as he came into the room.

For a minute he looked at me enquiringly over a pair of black-rimmed glasses, while I stood there neither thinking nor feeling, but waiting. Something in my brain, which until then had seemed to tick the slow movement of time, came suddenly to a stop like a clock that has run down.

"In my opinion an operation is unnecessary, Mr. Starr," he said, drawing out his watch as he spoke, "and in your wife's present condition I seriously advise against it. The injury to the spine may not be permanent, but there is only one cure for it – time – time and rest. To make recovery possible she should have absolute quiet, absolute freedom from care. She must be taken to a milder climate, – I would suggest southern California, – and she must be kept free from mental disturbance for a number of years."

"In that case there is hope of recovery?"

For an instant he stared at me blankly, his gaze wandering from his watch to the clock on the mantel, as if there were a discrepancy in the time, which he would like to correct.

"Ah, yes, hope," he replied suddenly, in a cheerful voice, "there is always hope." Then having uttered his confession of faith, he appeared to grow nervous. "Have you a time-table on your desk?" he enquired. "I'd like to look up an earlier train than the Florida special."

Having looked up his train, he turned to shake hands with me, while the abstracted and preoccupied expression in his face grew a trifle more human, as if he had found what he wanted.

"What your wife needs, my dear sir," he remarked, as he went out, "is not medical treatment, but daily and hourly care."

A minute later, when the front door had closed after him, and the motor car had borne him on his way to the station, I stood alone in the room, repeating his words with a kind of joy, as if they contained the secret of happiness for which I had sought. "Daily and hourly care, daily and hourly care." I tried to think clearly of what it meant – of the love, the sacrifice, the service that would go into it. I tried, too, to think of her as she was lying now, still and pale in the room upstairs, with the expression of touching helplessness, of pathetic courage, about her mouth; but even as I made the effort, the scent of burning leaves floated again through the window and I could see her only in her red shoes dancing over the sunken graves. "Daily and hourly care," I repeated aloud.

The words were still on my lips when old Esdras, stepping softly, came in and put a telegram into my hands, and as I tore it open, I said over slowly, like one who impresses a fact on the memory, "What your wife needs is daily and hourly care." Ah, she should have it. How she should have it! Then my eyes fell on the paper, and before I read the words, I knew that it was the offer of the presidency of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad. The end of my ambition, the great adventure of my boyhood, lay in my grasp.

With the telegram still in my hand, I went up the staircase, and entered the bedroom where Sally was lying, with wide, bright eyes, in the dimness.

"It's good news," I said, as I bent over her, "there's only good news to-day."

She looked up at me with that searching brightness I had seen when she gazed straight beyond me for the help that I could not give.

"It means going away from everything I have ever known," she said slowly; "it means leaving you, Ben."

"It means never leaving me again in your life," I replied; "not for a day – not for an hour."

"You will go, too?" she asked, and the faint wonder in her face pierced to my heart.