The Romance of a Plain Man Part 54

"I am glad of that," she said quietly. "If you had kept anything from me and worried over it, it would have broken my heart."

"Sally, I have been a fool."

"Yes, dear."

"Heaven knows, I don't mean to add to your troubles, but when I think of all that I've brought you to, I feel as if I should go out of my mind."

She put her hand on my arm, smiling up at me with her old sparkling gaiety. "Come and sit down by me, and we'll have a cup of tea, and you'll feel better. But first I must tell you that I am a terribly extravagant person, Ben, for I paid another dollar and a quarter for a pound of tea this morning."

"Thank heaven for it," I returned devoutly.

"And there's something else. I feel my sins growing on me. Do you remember last winter, when you were worrying so over your losses, and didn't know where you could turn for cash--do you remember that I paid five thousand dollars--five thousand dollars, you understand, and that's half of ten--for a lace gown?"

"Did you, darling?"

"Do you remember what you said?"

"'Thank you for the privilege of paying for it,' I hope."

"You paid the bill, and never told me I oughtn't to have bought it. What you said was, 'I'm awfully glad you've got such a becoming dress, because business is going badly, and we may have to pull up for a while.' Then I found out from George that you'd sold your motor car, and everything else you could lay hands on to meet the daily expenses. Now, Ben, tell me honestly which is the worse sinner, you or I?"

"But that was my fault, too--everything was my fault."

"The idea of your committing the extravagance of a lace gown! Why, you couldn't even tell the difference between imitation and real. And that pound of tea! You know you'd never have gone out and spent your last dollar and a quarter on a pound of tea."

"If you'd wanted it, Sally."

"Well, you speculated with that ten thousand dollars from exactly the same motive--because you thought I wanted so much that I didn't have.

But I bought that gown entirely to gratify my vanity--so you see, after all, I'm a great deal the worse sinner of us two. There, now, I must see about the baby. He was very fretful all the morning, and the doctor says it is the heat. I'm sure, Ben, that he ought to get out of the city. How can we manage it?"

"I'll manage it, dear. The General will be only too glad to lend the money. I'll go straight over and explain matters to him."

A cry came from little Benjamin in the nursery, and kissing me hurriedly with, "Remember, I'm a sinner, Ben," she left the room, while I took up my hat again, and went up-town to make my confession to the General and request his a.s.sistance.

"Lend it to you, you scamp!" he exclaimed, when I found him on his front porch with a palm-leaf fan in his hand. "Of course, I'll lend it to you; but why in the deuce were you so blamed cheerful this afternoon about that house in the country? I could have sworn you were in a gale over the idea. Here, Hatty, bring me a pen. I can see perfectly well by this d.a.m.ned electric light they've stuck at my door. Well, I'm sorry enough, for you, Ben. It's hard on your wife, and she's the kind of woman that makes a man believe in the angels. Her Aunt Matoaca all over--you know, George, I always told you that Sally Mickleborough was the image of her Aunt Matoaca."

"I know you did," replied George, twirling the end of his mustache. He looked tired and anxious, and it seemed to me suddenly that the whole city, and every face in it, under the white blaze of the electric light, had this same tired and anxious expression.

I took the cheque, put it into my pocket with a word of thanks, and turned to the steps.

"I can't stay, General, while the baby is ill. Sally may need me."

"Well, you're right, Ben, stick to her when she needs you, and you'll find she'll stick to you. I've always said that grat.i.tude counted stronger in the s.e.x than love."

As I went down the steps George joined me, and walked with me to the car line. The look on his face brought to my memory the night I had seen him staring moodily across the roses and lilies at Sally's bare shoulders, and the same fierce instinct of possession gnawed in my heart.

"Look here, Ben, I can't bear to think of the way things are going with Sally," he said.

"I can't bear to think of it myself," I returned gloomily.

"If there's ever anything I can do--remember I am at your service."

"I'll remember it, George," I answered, angry with myself because my grat.i.tude was shot through with a less n.o.ble feeling. "I'll remember it, and I thank you, too."

"Then it's a bargain. You won't let her suffer because you're too proud to take help?"

"No, I won't let her suffer if I have to beg to prevent it. Haven't I just done so?"

He held out his hand, I wrung it in mine, and then, as I got on the car, he turned away and walked at his lazy step back along the block. Looking from the car window, as it pa.s.sed on, I saw his slim, straight figure moving, with bent head, as if plunged in thought, under the electric light at the corner.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE DEEPEST SHADOW

As I entered the house, the sound of Aunt Euphronasia's crooning fell on my ears, and going into the nursery, I found Sally sitting by the window, with the child on her knees, while the old negress waved a palm-leaf fan back and forth with a slow, rhythmic movement. A night-lamp burned, with lowered wick, on the bureau, and as Sally looked up at me, I saw that her face had grown wan and haggard since I had left her.

"The baby was taken very ill just after you went," she said; "we feared a convulsion, and I sent one of the neighbours' children for the doctor.

It may be only the heat, he says, but he is coming again at midnight."

"I had hoped you would be able to get off in the morning."

"No, not now. The baby is too ill. In a few days, perhaps, if he is better."

Her voice broke, and kneeling beside her, I clasped them both in my arms, while the anguish in my heart rose suddenly like a wild beast to my throat.

"What can I do, Sally?" I asked pa.s.sionately. "What can I do?"

"Nothing, dear, nothing. Only be quiet."

Only be quiet! Rising to my feet I walked softly to the end of the room, and then turning came back again to the spot where I had knelt. At the moment I longed to knock down something, to strangle something, to pull to earth and destroy as a beast destroys in a rage. Through the open window I could see a full moon s.h.i.+ning over a magnolia, and the very softness and quiet of the moonlight appeared, in some strange way, to increase my suffering. A faint breeze, scented with jessamine, blew every now and then from the garden, rising, dying away, and rising again, until it waved the loosened tendrils of hair on Sally's neck. The odour, also, like the moonlight, mingled, while I stood there, and was made one with the anguish in my thoughts. Again I walked the length of the room, and again I turned and came back to the window beside which Sally sat. My foot as I moved stumbled upon something soft and round, and stooping to pick it up, I saw that it was a rubber doll, dropped by little Benjamin when he had grown too ill or too tired to play. I laid it in Sally's work-basket on the table, and then throwing off my coat, flung myself into a chair in one corner. A minute afterwards I rose, and walking gently through the long window, looked on the garden, which lay dim and fragrant under the moonlight. On the porch, twining in and out of the columns, the star jessamine, riotous with its second blooming, swayed back and forth like a curtain; and as I bent over, the small, white, deadly sweet blossoms caressed my face. A white moth whirred by me into the room, and when I entered again, I saw that it was flying swiftly in circles, above the flame of the night-lamp on the bureau.

Sally was sitting just as I had left her, her arm under the child's head, her face bent forward as if listening to a distant, almost inaudible sound. She appeared so still, so patient, that I wondered in amazement if she had sat there for hours, unchanged, unheeding, unapproachable? There was in her att.i.tude, in her pensive quiet, something so detached and tragic, that I felt suddenly that I had never really seen her until that minute; and instead of going to her as I had intended, I drew away, and stood on the threshold watching her almost as a stranger might have done. Once the child stirred and cried, lifting his little hands and letting them fall again with the same short cry of distress. The flesh of my heart seemed to tear suddenly asunder, and I sprang forward. Sally looked up at me, shook her head with a slow, quiet movement, and I stopped short as if rooted there by the single step I had taken. After ten years I remember every detail, every glimmer of light, every fitful rise and fall of the breeze, as if, not visual objects only, but scents, sounds, and movements, were photographed indelibly on my brain. I know that the white moth fluttered about my head, and that raising my hand, I caught it in my palm, which closed over it with violence. Then the cry from little Benjamin came again, and opening my palm, I watched the white moth fall dead, with crushed wings, to the floor. When I forget all else in my life, I shall still see Sally sitting motionless, like a painted figure, in the faint, reddish glow of the night-lamp, while above her, and above the little waxen face on her knee, the shadow, of the palm-leaf fan, waved by Aunt Euphronasia, flitted to and fro like the wing of a bat.

At midnight the doctor came, and when he left, I followed him to the front steps.

"I'll come again at dawn," he said, "and in the meantime look out for your wife. She's been strained to the point of breaking."

"You think, then, that the child is--is hopeless?"

"Not hopeless, but very serious. I'll be back in a few hours. If there's a change, send for me, and remember, as I said, look out for your wife."

I went indoors, found some port wine left in Miss Mitty's bottles, poured out a gla.s.s, and carried it to her.

"Drink this, darling," I said.