The Romance of a Plain Man Part 25

"Oh, well, if the National Oil wins, you may give her a fortune. There are plenty of young chaps who would jump at her. Bless my soul, she's more to my taste than Sally Mickleborough. It's the women who are such fools about birth, you know, men don't care a rap. Why, if I'd loved a woman, she might have been born in the poorhouse for all the thought I'd have given it. A pretty face or a small foot goes a long sight farther with a man than the tallest grandfather that ever lived." For a moment he was silent, and then he spoke softly, unconscious that he uttered his thought aloud. "No, Matoaca's birth, whatever it might have been, couldn't have come between us--it was her d.a.m.ned principles."

He looked tired and old, now that his armour of business had dropped from him, as he sat there, with the fur rug drawn over his chest, and his loose lower lip hanging slightly away from his shrunken gums. A sudden pity, the first I had ever dared feel for the president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, shot through my heart. The gay old bird, I told myself, was shedding his plumage at last.

"Well, as long as I can't rest on my birth, I might as well stand up on something," I said.

"Women think a lot of it," he resumed, as if he had not noticed my flippant interjection; "and I reckon it about fits the size of their minds. Why, to hear Miss Mitty Bland talk you would think good birth was the only virtue she admitted to the first rank. I was telling her about you," he added with a chuckle, "and you've got sense enough to see the humour of what she said."

"I hope I have, General."

"Well, I began it by boasting about your looks, Ben, if you don't mind.

'That wonderful boy of ours is the finest-looking fellow in the South to-day, Miss Mitty,' I burst out, 'and he stands six feet two in his stockings.' 'Ah, General,' she replied sadly, 'what are six feet two inches without a grandfather?'"

He threw back his head with a roar, appearing a trifle chagrined the next instant by my faint-hearted pretence of mirth.

"Doesn't it tickle you, Ben?" he enquired, checking his laughter.

"I'm afraid it makes me rather angry, General," I answered.

"Oh, well, I didn't think you'd take it seriously. It's just a joke, you know. Go ahead and make your fortune, and they'll receive you quick enough."

"But they have received me. They asked me to their party."

"That was Sally, my boy--it was her party, and she fought the ladies for you. That girl's a born fighter, and I reckon she gets it from Harry Mickleborough--for the only blessed thing he could do was to fight. He was a mighty poor man, was Harry, but a G.o.d Almighty soldier--and he sent more Yankees to glory than any single man in the whole South. The girl gets it from him, and she hasn't any of her aunts' aristocratic nonsense in her either. She told Miss Mitty, on the spot, and I can see her eyes s.h.i.+ne now, that she liked you and she meant to know you."

"That she meant to know me," I repeated, with a singing heart.

"The ladies were put out, I could see, but they ain't a match for that scamp Harry, and he's in her. There never lived the general that could command him, and he'd have been shot for insubordination in '63 if he hadn't been as good as a whole company to the army. 'I'll fight for the South and welcome,' he used to say, 'but, by G.o.d, sir, I'll fight as I d.a.m.n please.' 'Twas the same way about the church, too. Old Dr. Peterson got after him once about standing, instead of kneeling, during prayers, and 'I'll pray as I d.a.m.n please, sir!' responded Harry. Oh, he was a sad scamp!"

"So his daughter fought for me?" I said. "How did it end?"

"It will end all right when you are president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, and have s.h.i.+pped me to Kingdom Come. They won't shut their doors in your face, then."

"But she stood up for me?" I asked, and my voice trembled.

"She? Do you mean Miss Matoaca? Well, she granted your good looks and your virtues, but she regretted that they couldn't ask you to their house."

"And Miss Mitty?"

"Oh, Miss Mitty a.s.sured me that six feet two were as an inch in her sight, without a grandfather."

"But her niece--Miss Mickleborough?" I had worked delicately up to my point.

"The girl fought for you--but then she's obliged to fight for something?--it's Harry in her. That's why, as I said to George at breakfast, I don't want him to marry her. She's a good girl, and I like her, but who in the deuce wants to marry a fighting wife? Look at that fellow mauling his horse, Ben. It makes me sick to see 'em do it, but it's no business of mine, I reckon."

"It is of mine, General," I replied, for the sight of an ill-treated animal had made my blood boil since childhood. Before he could answer, I had jumped over the moving wheel, and had reached the miserable, sore-backed horse struggling under a load of coal and a big stick.

"Come off and put your shoulder to the wheel, you drunken brute," I said, as my rage rose in my throat.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if I will," replied the fellow, and he was about to begin belabouring again, when I seized him by the collar and swung him clear to the street.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if you don't," I retorted.

I was a strong man, and when my pa.s.sions were roused, the thought of my own strength slipped from consciousness.

"You'll break his bones, Ben," said the General, leaning out of his buggy, but his eyes shone as they might have shone at the sight of his first battle.

"I hope I shall," I responded grimly, and going over to the wagon I put my shoulder to the wheel, and began the ascent of the steep hill.

Somebody on the pavement came to my help on the other side, and we went up slowly, with a half-drunken driver reeling at our sides and the General following, in his buggy, a short way behind.

"I thought you were a diffident fellow, Ben," remarked the great man, as I took my seat again by his side; "but I don't believe there's another man in Richmond that would make such a spectacle of himself."

"I forget myself when I'm worked up," I answered, "and I forget that anybody is looking."

"Well, somebody was," he replied slyly. "You didn't see Miss Matoaca Bland pa.s.s you in a carriage as you were pus.h.i.+ng that wheel?"

"No, I didn't see anybody."

"She saw you--and so did Sally Mickleborough. Why, I'd have given something pretty in my day to make a girl's eyes blaze like that."

A week later I swallowed my pride, with an effort, and called at the old grey house at the hour of sunset. Selim, stepping softly, conducted me into the dimly lighted drawing-room, where a cedar log burned, with a delicious fragrance, on a pair of high bra.s.s andirons. The red glow, half light, half shadow, flickered over the quaint tapestried furniture, the white-painted woodwork, and the portraits of departed Blands and Fairfaxes that smiled gravely down, with averted eyes. In a ma.s.sive gilt frame over a rosewood spinet there was a picture of Miss Mitty and Miss Mataoca, painted in fancy dress, with clasped hands, under a garland of roses. My gaze was upon it, when the sound of a door opening quickly somewhere in the rear came to my ears; and the next instant I heard Miss Mitty's prim tones saying distinctly:--

"Tell Mr. Starr, Selim, that the ladies are not receiving."

There was a moment's silence, followed by a voice that brought my delighted heart with a bound into my throat.

"Aunt Mitty, I _will_ see him."

"Sally, how can you receive a man who was not born a gentleman?"

"Aunt Mitty, if you don't let me see him here, I'll--I'll meet him in the street."

The door shut sharply, there was a sound of rapid steps, and the voices ceased. Harry Mickleborough, in his daughter, I judged, had gained the victory; for an instant afterwards I heard her cross the hall, with a defiant and energetic rustle of skirts. When she entered the room, and held out her hand, I saw that she was dressed in her walking gown. There were soft brown furs about her throat, and on her head she wore a small fur hat, with a bunch of violets at one side, under a thin white veil.

"I was just going to walk," she said, breathing a little quickly, while her eyes, very wide and bright, held that puzzled and resolute look I remembered; "will you come with me?"

She turned at once to the door, as if eager to leave the house, and while I followed her through the hall, and down the short flight of steps to the pavement, I was conscious of a sharp presentiment that I should never again cross that threshold.

CHAPTER XV

A MEETING IN THE ENCHANTED GARDEN

I spoke no word of love in that brisk walk up Franklin Street, and when I remembered this a month afterwards, it seemed to me that I had let the opportunity of a lifetime slip by. Since that afternoon I had not seen Sally again--some fierce instinct held me back from entering the doors that would have closed against me--and as the days pa.s.sed, crowded with work and cheered by the immediate success of the National Oil Company, I felt that Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca, and even Sally, whom I loved, had faded out of the actual world into a vague cloud-like horizon. To women it is given, I suppose, to merge the ideal into everyday life, but with men it is different. I saw Sally still every minute that I lived, but I saw her as a star, set high above the common business world in which I had my place--above the strain and stress of the General's office, above the rise and fall of the stock market, above the brisk triumphant war with compet.i.tors for the National Oil Company, above even the hope of the future presidency of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad.

Between my love and its fulfilment, stretched, I knew, hard years of struggle, but bred in me, bone and structure, the instinct of democracy was still strong enough to support me in the hour of defeat. Never once--not even when I sat, condescendingly plied with coffee and partridges, face to face with the wonder expressed in Miss Mitty's eyes, had I admitted to myself that I was obliged to remain in the cla.s.s from which I had sprung. Courage I had never lost for an instant; the present might embarra.s.s me, but the future, I felt always, I held securely grasped in my own hands. The birthright of a Republic was mine as well as the General's, and I knew that among a free people it was the mettle of the man that would count in the struggle. In the fight between democratic ideals and Old World inst.i.tutions I had no fear, even to-day, of what the future would bring. The right of a man to make his own standing was all that I asked.

And yet the long waiting! As I walked one Sunday afternoon over to Church Hill, after a visit to Jessy (who was living now with a friend of the doctor's), I asked myself again and again if Sally had read my heart that last afternoon and had seen in it the reason of my fierce reserve.