"Oh, we'll ride in de golden cha'iot, by en bye, lil' chillun,We'll ride in de golden cha'iot, by en bye.Oh, we'se all gwine home ter glory, by en bye, lil' chillun,We'se all gwine home ter glory by en bye.Oh, we'll drink outer de healin' fountain, by en bye, lil' chillun,We'll drink outer de healin' fountain by en bye."
"Oh, we'll ride in de golden cha'iot, by en bye, lil' chillun,We'll ride in de golden cha'iot, by en bye.
Oh, we'se all gwine home ter glory, by en bye, lil' chillun,We'se all gwine home ter glory by en bye.
Oh, we'll drink outer de healin' fountain, by en bye, lil' chillun,We'll drink outer de healin' fountain by en bye."
"Sally!" I called aloud, and my voice sounded thin and distant in my own ears.
There was the sound of quick steps, the door opened and shut, and Sally came in and leaned over me. She wore a blue gingham apron over her dress, her sleeves were rolled up, and her hand, when it touched my face, felt warm and soft as if it had been plunged into hot soapsuds. Then my eyes fell on a jagged burn on her wrist.
"What is that?" I asked, pointing to it. "You've hurt yourself."
"Oh, Ben, my dearest, are you really awake?"
"What is that, Sally? You have hurt yourself."
"I burned my hand on the stove—it is nothing. Dearest, are you better? Wait. Don't speak till you take your nourishment."
She went out, returning a moment later with a glass of milk and whiskey, which she held to my lips, sitting on the bedside, with her arm slipped under my pillow.
"How long have I been ill, Sally?"
"Several weeks. You became conscious and then had a relapse. Do you remember?"
"No, I remember nothing."
"Well, don't talk. Everything is all right—and I'm so happy to have you alive I could sing the Jubilee, as Aunt Euphronasia says."
"Several weeks and there was no money! Of course, you went to the General, Sally—but I forgot, the General is away. You went to somebody, though. Surely you got help?"
"Oh, I managed, Ben. There's nothing to worry about now that you are better. I feel that there'll never be anything to worry about again."
"But several weeks, Sally, and I lying like a log, and the General away! What did you do?"
"I nursed you for one thing, and gave you medicine and chicken broth and milk and whiskey. Now, I shan't talk any more until the doctor comes. Lie quiet and try to sleep."
But the jagged burn on her wrist still held my gaze, and catching her hand as she turned away, I pressed my lips to it with all my strength.
"Your hand feels so queer, Sally. It's as red as if it had been scalded."
"I've been cooking my dinner, and you see I eat a great deal. There, now, that's positively my last word."
Bending over, she kissed me hurriedly, a tear fell on my face, and then before I could catch the fluttering hem of her apron, she had broken from me, and gone out, closing the door after her. For a minute I lay perfectly motionless, too weak for thought. Then opening my eyes with an effort, I stared straight up at the white ceiling, against which a green June beetle was knocking with a persistent, buzzing sound that seemed an accompaniment to the crooning lullaby of Aunt Euphronasia.
"Oh, we'se all gwine home ter glory, by en bye, lil' chillun,We'se all gwine home ter glory, by en bye."
"Oh, we'se all gwine home ter glory, by en bye, lil' chillun,We'se all gwine home ter glory, by en bye."
"Will he break his wings on the ceiling, or will he fly out of the window?" I thought drowsily, and it appeared to me suddenly that my personal troubles—my illness, my anxiety for Sally, and even the poverty that must have pressed upon her—had receded to an obscure and cloudy distance, in which they became less important in my mind than the problem of the green June beetle knocking against the ceiling. "Will he break his wings or will he fly out?" I asked, with a dull interest in the event, which engrossed my thoughts to the exclusion of all personal matters. "I ought to think of Sally and the child, but I can't. My head won't let me. It has gone wrong, and if I begin to think hard thoughts I'll go delirious again. There is jessamine blooming somewhere. Did she have a spray in her hair when she bent over me? Why did she wear a gingham apron at a ball instead of pink tarlatan? No, that was not the problem I had to solve. Will he break his wings or will he fly out?"
"Oh, we'll fit on de golden slippers, by en bye, lil' chillun,"
"Oh, we'll fit on de golden slippers, by en bye, lil' chillun,"
crooned Aunt Euphronasia, rocking little Benjamin in the square of sunlight.
The song soothed me and I slept for a minute. Then starting awake in the cold sweat of terror, I struggled wildly after the problem which still eluded me.
"Has he flown out?" I asked.
"Who, Marse Ben?" enquired the old negress, stopping her rocking and her lullaby at the same instant.
"The June beetle. I thought he'd break his wings on the ceiling."
"Go 'way f'om hyer, honey, he ain' gwine breck 'is wings. Dar's moughty little sense inside er dem, but dey ain' gwine do dat. Is yo' wits done come back?"
"Not quite. I feel crazy. Aunt Euphronasia!"
"W'at you atter, Marse Ben?"
"How did Sally manage?"
"Ef'n hit's de las' wud I speak, she's done managed jes exactly ez ef'n she wuz de Lawd A'moughty."
"And she didn't suffer?"
"Who? She? Dar ain' none un us suffer, honey, we'se all been livin' on de ve'y fat er de lan', we is. Dar's been roas' pig en shoat e'vy blessed day fur dinner."
She had talked me down, and I turned over again and lay in silence, until Sally came in with a dose of medicine and a cup of broth.
"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.
As I was about to place my foot on the bottom step and begin the difficult ascent, my eyes, raised to our sitting-room window, hung spellbound on a black and white sign fastened against the panes:
"Fine laundering. Old laces a specialty. Desserts made to order."
"Old laces a specialty," I repeated, as if struck by the phrase. Then, as my strength failed me, I sank on the stone step in the patch of shade, and buried my face in my hands.
I was still sitting there, with my head propped in my hands, when my eyes, which had seen nothing before, saw Sally coming through the hot dust in the street, with George Bolingbroke, carrying a bundle under his arm, at her side. As she neared me a perplexed and anxious look—the look I had seen always on the face of my mother when the day's burden was heavy—succeeded the smiling brightness with which she had been speaking to George.
"Why, Ben!" she exclaimed, quickening her steps, "what are you doing out here in this terrible heat?"
"I got down and couldn't get back," I answered.
"Well, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Here, George, give me the bundle and help him up."
"He deserves to be left here," remarked George, laughing good-humouredly as he grasped my arm, and half led, half dragged me up the steps and into the house. Then, when I was placed in the deep chintz-covered chair by the window, Sally came in with a milk punch, which she held to my lips while I drank.
"You're really very foolish, Ben."
"I know all, Sally," I replied, sitting up and pushing the glass and her hand away, "and I'm going to get up and go back to work to-morrow."
"Then drink this, please, so you will be able to go. I suppose you saw the sign," she pursued quietly, when I had swallowed the punch; "George saw it, too, and it put him into a rage."
"What has George got to do with it?" I demanded with a pang in my heart.
"He hasn't anything, of course, but it was kind of him all the same to want to lend me his money. You see, the way of it was that when you fell ill, and there wasn't a penny in the house, I remembered how bitterly you'd hated the idea of taking help."
I caught her hand to my lips. "I'd beg, borrow, or steal for you, darling."
"You'd neglected to tell me that, so I didn't know. What I did was to sit down and think hard for an hour, and at the end of that time, when you were well enough to be left, I got on the car and went over to see several women, who, I knew, were so rich that they had plenty of old lace and embroidery. I told them exactly how it was and, of course, they all wanted to give me money, and Jennie Randolph even sat down and cried when I wouldn't take it. Then they agreed to let me launder all their fine lace and embroidered blouses, and I've made desserts and cakes for some of them and—and—"
"Don't go on, Sally, I can't stand it. I'm a crackbrained fool and I'm going to cry."
"Of course, the worst part was having to leave you, but when George found out about it, he insisted upon fetching and carrying my bundles."
"George!" I exclaimed sharply, and a spasm of pain, like the entrance of poison into an unhealed wound, contracted my heart. "Was that confounded package under his arm," I questioned, almost angrily, "some of the stuff?"
"That was a blouse of Maggie Tyler's. He is going to take it back to her on Friday. There, now, stay quiet, while I run and speak to him. He is waiting for me in the kitchen."
She went out, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to take in washing and for George to deliver it, while, opening the long green shutters, I sat staring, beyond the humming-birds and the white columns, to the shimmering haze that hung over the old tea-roses and the dwindled box in the garden. Here the heat, though it was still visible to the eyes, was softened and made fragrant by the greenness of the trees and the grass and by the perfume of the jessamine and the old tea-roses, dropping their faintly coloured leaves in the sunshine. From time to time the sounds of the city, grown melancholy and discordant, like the sounds that one hears in fever, reached me across the shimmering vagueness of the garden.
And then as I sat there, with folded hands, there came to me, out of some place, so remote that it seemed a thousand miles away from the sunny stillness, and yet so near that I knew it existed only within my soul, a sense of failure, of helplessness, of humiliation. A hundred casual memories thronged through my mind, and all these memories, gathering significance from my imagination, plunged me deeper into the bitter despondency which had closed over my head. I saw the General, with his little, alert bloodshot eyes, like the eyes of an intelligent bulldog, with that look of stubbornness, of tenacity, persisting beneath the sly humour that gleamed in his face, as if he were thinking always somewhere far back in his brain, "I'll hang on to the death, I'll hang on to the death." His figure, which, because of that legendary glamour I had seen surrounding it in childhood, still personified shining success in my eyes, appeared to add a certain horror to this sense of helplessness, of failure, that dragged me under. Deep down within me, down below my love for Sally or for the child, something older than any emotion, older than any instinct except the instinct of battle, awakened and passed from passiveness into violence. "Let me but start again in the race," said this something, "let me but stand once more on my feet." The despondency, which had been at first formless and vague as mere darkness, leaped suddenly into a tangible shape, and I felt that the oppressive weight of the debt on my shoulders was the weight, not of thought, but of metal. Until that was lifted—until I had struggled free—I should be crippled, I told myself, not only in ambition, but in body.
From the detached kitchen, at the end of the short brick walk, overgrown with wild violets, that led to it, the sound of George's laugh fell on my ears. Rising to my feet with an effort, I stood, listening, without thought, to the sound, which seemed to grow vacant and sad as it floated to me in the warm air over the sunken bricks. Then passing through the long window, I descended the steps slowly, and stopped in the shadow of a pink crape myrtle that grew near the kitchen doorway. Again the merriment came to me, Sally's laughter mingling this time with George's.
"No, that will never do. This is the way," she said, in her sparkling voice, which reminded me always of running water.
"Sally!" I called, and moving nearer, I paused at the kitchen step, while she came quickly forward, with some white, filmy stuff she had just rinsed in the tub still in her hands.
"Why, here's Ben!" she exclaimed. "You bad boy, when I told you positively not to get up out of that chair!"
A gingham apron was pinned over her waist and bosom, her sleeves were rolled back, and I saw the redness from the hot soapsuds rising from her hands to her elbows.
"For God's sake, Sally, what are you doing?" I demanded, and reaching out, as I swayed slightly, I caught the lintel of the door for support.
"I'm washing and George is splitting kindling wood," she replied cheerfully, shaking out the white, filmy stuff with an upward movement of her bare arms; "the boy who splits the wood never came—I think he ate too many currants yesterday—and if George hadn't offered his services as man of all work, I dread to think what you and Aunt Euphronasia would have eaten for supper."
"It's first-rate work for the muscles, Ben," remarked George, flinging an armful of wood on the brick floor, and kneeling beside the stove to kindle a fire in the old ashes. "I haven't a doubt but it's better for the back and arms than horseback riding. All the same," he added, poking vigorously at the smouldering embers, "I'm going to wallop that boy as soon as I've got this fire started."
"You won't have time to do that until you've delivered the day's washing," rejoined Sally, with merriment.
"Yes, I shall. I'll stop on my way—that boy comes first," returned George with a grim, if humorous, determination.
This humour, this lightness, and above all this gallantry, which was so much a part of the older civilisation to which they belonged, wrought upon my disordered nerves with a feeling of anger. Here, at last, I had run against that "something else" of the Blands', apart from wealth, apart from position, apart even from blood, of which the General had spoken. Miss Mitty might go in rags and do her own cooking, he had said, but as long as she possessed this "something else," that supported her, she would preserve to the end, in defiance of circumstances, her terrible importance.
"You know I don't care a bit what I eat, Sally!" I blurted out, in a temper.
"Well, you may not, dear, but George and I do," she rejoined, pinning the white stuff on a clothes-line she had stretched between the door and the window, "we are both interested, you see, in getting you back to work. There's the door-bell, George. You may wash your hands at the sink and answer it. If it's the butter, bring it to me, and if it's a caller, let him wait, while I turn down my sleeves."
Rising from his knees, George washed his hands at the sink, and went out along the brick walk to the house, while I stood in the doorway, under the shadow of the pink crape myrtle, and made a vow in my heart.
"Sally," I said at last in the agony of desperation, "you ought to have married George."
With her arms still upraised to the clothes-line, she looked round at me over her shoulder.
"He is useful in an emergency," she admitted; "but, after all, the emergency isn't the man, you know."
I was about to press the point home to conscience, when George, returning along the walk, announced with the mock solemnity of a footman in livery, that the callers were Dr. Theophilus and the General, who awaited us in the sitting-room.
"There's no hurry, Sally," he added; "they started over to condole with you, I imagine, but they've both become so absorbed in discussing this neighbourhood as it was fifty years ago, that I honestly believe they've entirely forgotten that you live here."
"Well, we'll have to remind them," said Sally, with a laugh; and when she had rolled down her sleeves and tidied her hair before the cracked mirror on the wall, we went back to the house, where we found the two old men engaged in a violent controversy over the departed inhabitants of Church Hill.
"I tell you, Theophilus, it wasn't Robert Carrington, but his brother Bushrod that lived in that house!" exclaimed the General, as we entered; and he concluded—while he shook hands with us, in the tone of one who forever clinches an argument, "I can take you this minute straight over there to his grave in Saint John's Churchyard. How are you, Ben, glad to see you up," he observed in an absent-minded manner. "Have you got a palm-leaf fan around, Sally? I can't get through these sweltering afternoons without a fan. What do you think Theophilus is arguing about now? He is trying to prove to me that it was Robert Carrington, not Bushrod, who lived in that big house at the top of the hill. Why, I tell you I knew Bushrod Carrington as well as I did my own brother, sir."
He sat far back in his chair, pursing his full red lips angrily, like a whimpering child, and fanning himself with short, excited movements of the palm-leaf fan. His determined, mottled face was covered thickly with fine drops of perspiration.
"I knew Robert very intimately," remarked the doctor, in a peaceable voice. "He married Matty Price, and I was the best man at his wedding. They lived unhappily, I believe, but he told me on his death-bed—I attended him in his last illness—that he would do it over again if he had to re-live his life. 'I never had a dull minute after I married her, doctor,' he said, 'I lived with her for forty years and I never knew what was coming next till she died.'"
"Robert was a fool," commented the General, brusquely, "a long white-livered, studious fellow that dragged around at his wife's apron strings. Couldn't hold a candle to his brother Bushrod. When I was a boy, Bushrod Carrington—he was nearer my father's age than mine—was the greatest dandy and duellist in the state. Got all his clothes in Paris, and I can see him now, as plainly as if it were yesterday, when he used to come to church in a peachblow brocade waistcoat of a foreign fashion, and his hair shining with pomatum. Yes, he was a great duellist—that was the age of duels. Shot a man the first year he came back from France, didn't he?"
"A sad scamp, but a good husband," remarked the doctor, ignoring the incident of the duel. "I remember when his first child was born, he was on his knees praying the whole time, and then when it was over he went out and got as drunk as a lord. 'Where's Bushrod?' were the first words his wife spoke, and when some fool answered her, 'Bushrod's drunk, Bessy,' she replied, like an angel, 'Poor fellow, I know he needs it.' They were a most devoted couple, I always heard. Who was she, George? It's gone out of my mind. Was she Bessy Randolph?"
"No, Bessy Randolph was his first flame, and when she threw him over for Ned Peyton, he married Bessy Tucker. They used to say that when he couldn't get one Bessy, he took the other. Yes, he made a devoted husband, never a wild oat to sow after his marriage. I remember when I called on him once, when he was living in that big house there on top of the hill—"
"I think you're wrong about that, George. I am sure it was Robert who lived there. When I attended him in his last illness—"
"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.
"I say, Ben, if you had a little cash, here's an opportunity to make your fortune rise," he remarked; "I've just given George a tip and he's going in."
"You'd better keep out of it, Ben," said George, wheeling round suddenly after he had nodded and turned away. "It's copper, and you know if there's a thing on earth that can begin to monkey when you don't expect it to, it's the copper trade."
"Bonanza copper mining stock is selling at zero again," commented Sam imperturbably, "and if it doesn't go up like a shot, then I'm a deader."
Whether his future was to be that of a deader or not concerned me little; but while I stood there on the crowded pavement, with my eyes on the sky, I had a sudden sensation, as if the burden of debt—which was the burden, not of thought, but of metal—had been removed from my shoulders. My first fortune had been made in copper,—why not repeat it? That one minute's sense of release, of freedom, had gone like wine to my head. I saw stretching away from me the dull years I must spend in chains, but I saw, also, in the blessed vision which Sam Brackett had called up, the single means of escape.
"What does the General think of it, George?" I enquired.
"He's putting in money, I believe, moderately as usual," replied George, with a worried look on his face; "but I tell you frankly, Ben, whether it's a good thing or not, if that's Miss Mitty's legacy, you oughtn't to speculate with it. Sally might need it."
"Sally needs a thousand times more," I returned, not without irritation, "and I shall get it for her in the way I can." Then I held out my hand. "You're a first-rate chap, George," I added, "but just think what it would mean to Sally if I could get out of debt at a jump."
"I dare say," he responded, "but I'm not sure that putting your last ten thousand dollars in the Bonanza copper mining stock is a rational way of doing it."
"Such things aren't done in a rational way. The secret of successful speculating is to be willing to dare everything for something. Sam's got faith in the Bonanza, and he knows a hundred times as much about it as you or I."
"If it doesn't rise," said Sam emphatically, "then I'm a deader."
I still saw the dull years stretching ahead, and I still felt the tangible weight on my shoulders of the two hundred thousand dollars I owed. The old prostrate instinct of the speculator, which is but the gambler's instinct in better clothes, lifted its head within me.
"Well, it won't do any harm to go into Townley's and find out about it," I said, moving in the direction of the broker's office next door.
My first sensation after putting Sally's ten thousand dollars into copper mining stock was one of immense relief, almost of exhilaration, as if I already heard in my fancy the clanking of the loosened chains as they dropped from me. I recalled, one by one, the incidents of my earliest "risky" and yet fortunate venture, when, following the General's advice, I had gone in boldly, and after a short period of breathless fluctuation, had "realised," as he had said, "a nice little fortune for a first hatching." And because this seemed to me the single means of recovery, because I had so often before in my life been guided by some infallible instinct to seize the last chance that in the outcome had proved to be the right way, I felt now that reliance upon fortune, that assurance of the thing hoped for, which was as much a portion of experience as it was a quality of temperament.
At home, when I reached there late in the afternoon, I found Sally just stepping out of the General's buggy, while the great man, sacrificing gallantry to the claims of gout, sat, under his old-fashioned linen dust robe, holding the slackened reins over the grey horse.
"We've got a beautiful plan, Ben, the General and I," remarked Sally, when he had driven away, and we were entering the house; "but it's a secret, and you're not to know of it until it is ready to be divulged."
"Is George aware of it?" I asked irrelevantly, moved by I know not what spirit of averseness.
"Yes, we've let George into it, but I'm not perfectly sure that he approves. The idea came to the General and to me almost at the same instant, and that is a very good thing to be said of any idea. It proves it to be an elastic one anyway."
She talked merrily through supper, breaking into smiles from time to time, caressing evidently this idea, which was so elastic, and which she declined provokingly to divulge. But I, also, had my secret, for my mind, responding to the springs of hope, toyed ceaselessly with the possibility of escape. For several weeks this dream of ultimate freedom possessed my thoughts, and then, at last, when the copper trade, instead of reviving, seemed paralysed for a season, I awakened with a shock, to the knowledge that I had lost Sally's little fortune as irretrievably as I appeared to have lost my larger one. Clearly my financial genius was asleep, or off assisting at a sacrifice; and it did little good, as I toiled home in the afternoon, to curse myself frantically for a perverse and a thankless brute. It was too late now; I had played the fool once too often and the money was gone. Was my brain weakened permanently by the fever, I wondered? Had the muscles of my will dwindled away and grown flabby, like the muscles of my body?
As I left the car, a group of school children ran along the pavement in front of me, and then scattering like pigeons, fluttered after a big, old-fashioned barouche that had turned the corner. When it came nearer, I saw that the barouche was the General's, a piece of family property which had descended to him from his father, and that the great man now sat on the deep, broadcloth-covered cushions, his legs very far apart, his hands clasped on his gold-headed walking-stick, and his square, mottled face staring straight ahead, with that look of tenacity, as if he were saying somewhere back in his brain, "I'll hang on to the death."
Before our door, where Sally was waiting in her hat and veil, the barouche drew up with a flourish; Balaam, the old negro coachman, settled himself for a doze on the box, and the pair of fat roans began switching their long tails in the faces of the swarming school children.
"So you're just in time, Ben," remarked the General, while he hobbled out in order to help Sally in. "I thought you'd have been at home at least an hour ago. Meant to come earlier, but something went wrong at the stables. Something always is wrong at the stables. I wouldn't be in George's shoes for a mint of money. Never a day passes that he isn't fussing about his horses, or his traps, or his groom. Well, you're ready, Sally? I like a woman who is punctual, and I never in my life knew but one who was. That was your Aunt Matoaca. You get it from her, I suppose. Ah,shenever kept you waiting a minute,—no fussing about gloves or fans or handkerchiefs. Always just ready when you came for her, and looking like an angel. Never saw her in a rose-lined bonnet, did you, my dear?"
"Only in black, General," replied Sally, as she took her seat in the barouche. "Come, get in, Ben, we're going to reveal our secret at last, and we want you to be with us."
The General got in again with difficulty, groaning a little; I entered and sat down opposite to them, with my back to the horses; and the old negro coachman, disappointed at the length of the wait, pulled the reins gently and gave a slight, admonishing flick at the broad flanks of the roans. Behind the barouche the school children still fluttered, and turning in his seat, the General looked back angrily and threatened them with a wave of his big ebony walking-stick.
"What is it, Sally?" I asked, striving to force a curiosity my wretchedness prevented me from feeling; "can't you unfold the mystery?"
"Be patient, be patient," she responded gaily, leaning back beside the General, as we rolled down the wide street under the wilted, dusty leaves of the trees. "Haven't you noticed for weeks that the General and I have had a secret?"
"Yes, I've noticed it, but I thought you'd tell me when the time came."
"We shan't tell him, shall we, General?—We'll show him."
"Ah, there's time enough, time enough," returned the General, absent-mindedly, for he had not been listening. His resolute, bulldog face, flushed now by the heat and covered with a fine perspiration, had taken on an absorbed and pondering look. "I never come along here that it doesn't put me back at least fifty years," he observed, leaning over his side of the barouche, and peering down one of the side streets that led past the churchyard. "Sorry they've been meddling with that old church. Better have left it as it used to be in my boyhood. Do you see that little house there, set back in the yard, with the chimney crumbling to pieces? That was the first school I ever went to, and it was taught by old Miss Deborah Timberlake, the sister of William Timberlake who shot all those stags' heads you've got hanging in your hall. Nobody ever knew why she taught school. Plenty to eat and drink. William gave her everything that she wanted, but she got cranky when she'd turned sixty, and insisted on being independent. Independent, she said! Pish! Tush. Never learned a word from her. Taught us English history, then Virginia history. As for the rest of America, she used to say it didn't have a history, merely a past. Mentioned the Boston tea party once by mistake, and had to explain thatthatwas an incident, not history. Well, well, it seems a thousand years ago. Never could understand, to save my life, why she took to teaching. Had all she wanted. Her brother William was an odd man. A fine toast. I never heard a better story—I remember them even as a boy—and often enough I've got them off since his death. Used to ill-treat his slaves, though, they said, and had queer ideas about women and property. Married his wife who didn't have a red penny, and on his wedding journey, when she called him by his name, replied to her, 'Madam, my dependants are accustomed to address me as Mr. Timberlake.' Ha, ha! a queer bird was William."
The street was the one down which I had passed so many years ago, wedged tightly between my mother and Mrs. Kidd, to the funeral of old Mr. Cudlip; and it seemed to me that it held unchanged, as if it had stagnated there between the quaint old houses, that same atmosphere of sadness, of desolation. The houses, still half closed, appeared all but deserted; the aged negresses, staring after us under their hollowed palms, looked as if they had stood there forever. Progress, which had invaded the neighbouring quarters, had left this one, as yet, undisturbed.
Opposite to me, Sally smiled with beaming eyes when she met my gaze. I knew that she was hugging her secret, and I knew, in some intuitive way, that she expected this secret to afford me pleasure. The General, peering from right to left in search of associations, kept moving his lips as if he were thinking aloud. On his face, in the deep creases where the perspiration had gathered, the dust, rising from the street, had settled in greyish streaks. From time to time, in an absent-minded manner, he got out his big white silk handkerchief and wiped it away.
"There now! I've got it! Hold on a minute, Balaam. That's the house that Robert Carrington built clean over here on the other side of the hill. There it is now—the one with that pink crape myrtle in the yard, and the four columns, you can see it with your own eyes. Theophilus tried to prove to me that Robert lived in Bushrod's house, and that he'd attended him there in his last illness. Last illness, indeed! The truth is that Theophilus isn't what he once was. Memory's going and he doesn't like to own it. No use arguing with him—you can't argue with a man whose memory is going—but there's Robert Carrington's house. You've seen it with your own eyes. Drive on, Balaam."
Balaam drove on; and the carriage, leaving the city and the thinning suburbs, passed rapidly into one of the country roads, white with dust, which stretched between ragged borders of yarrow and pokeberry that were white with dust also. The fields on either side, sometimes planted in corn, oftener grown wild in broomsedge or life-everlasting, shimmered under the heat, which was alive with the whirring of innumerable insects. Here and there a negro cabin, built close to the road, stood bare in a piece of burned-out clearing, or showed behind the thick fanlike leaves of gourd vines, with the heads of sunflowers nodding heavily beside the open doorways. Occasionally, in the first few miles, a covered wagon crawled by us on its way to town, the driver leaning far over the dusty horses, and singing out "Howdy!" in a friendly voice,—to which the General invariably responded "Howdy," in the same tone, as he touched the wide brim of his straw hat with his ebony stick.
"Hasn't got on the scent, has he?" he enquired presently of Sally, with a sly wink in my direction. "Are you sure George hasn't let it out? Never could keep a secret, could George. He's one of those close-mouthed fellows that shuts a thing up so tight it explodes before he's aware of it. He can't hide anything from me. I read him just as if he were a book. It's as well, I reckon, as I told him the other day, that he isn't still in love with your wife, Ben, or it would be written all over him as plain as big print."
My eyes caught Sally's, and she blushed a clear, warm pink to the heavy waves of her hair.
"Not that he'd ever be such a rascal as to keep up a fancy for a married woman," pursued the great man, unseeing and unthinking. "The Bolingbrokes may have been wild, but they've always been men of honour, and even if they've played fast and loose now and then with a woman, they have never tried to pilfer anything that belonged to another man."
"I think we're coming to it," said Sally suddenly, trying to turn the conversation to lighter matters.
"Ah, so we are, so we are. That's a good view of the river, and there's the railroad station at the foot of the hill not a half mile away. It's the very thing you need, Ben, it will be the making of you and of the youngster, as I said to Sally when the idea first entered my mind."
The barouche made a quick turn into a straight lane bordered by old locust trees, and stopped a few minutes later before a square red brick country house, with four white columns supporting the portico, and a bower of ancient ivy growing over the roof.
"Here we are at last! Oh, Ben, don't you like it?" said Sally, springing to the ground before the horses had stopped.
"Like it? Of course he likes it," returned the General, impatiently, as he got out and followed her between the rows of calycanthus bushes that edged the walk. "What business has he got not to like it after all the trouble we've been to on his account? It's the very thing for his health—that's what I said to you, my dear, as soon as I heard of Miss Mitty's legacy. 'The old Bending place is for sale and will go cheap,' I said. 'Why not move out into the country and give Ben and the youngster a chance to breathe fresh air? He's beginning to look seedy and fresh air will set him up.'"
"But I really don't believe he likes it," rejoined Sally, a little wistfully, turning, as she reached the columns of the portico, and looking doubtfully into my face.
"You know I like anything that you like, Sally," I answered in a voice which, I knew, sounded flat and unenthusiastic, in spite of my effort; "it's a fine house and there's a good view of the river, I dare say, at the back."
"I thought it would please you, Ben. It seemed to the General and me the very best thing we could do with Aunt Mitty's money."
There was a hurt look in her eyes; her mouth trembled as she spoke, and all the charming mystery had fled from her manner. If we had been alone I should have opened my arms to her, and have made my confession with her head on my shoulder; but the square, excited figure of the General, who kept marching aimlessly up and down between the calycanthus bushes, put the restraint of a terrible embarrassment upon my words. Tell her I must, and yet how could I tell her while the little cynical bloodshot eyes of the great man were upon us?
"Let's go to the back. We can see the river from the terrace," she said, and there was a touching disappointment in her smile and her voice.
"Yes, we'll go to the back," responded the General, with eagerness. "Follow this path, Ben, the one that leads round the west wing," and he added when we had turned the corner of the house, and stopped on the trim terrace, covered with beds of sweet-william and foxglove, "What do you think of that for a view now? If those big poplars were out of the way, you could see clear down to Merrivale, the old Smith place, where I used to go as a boy."
Meeting the disappointment in Sally's look, I tried to rise valiantly to the occasion; but it was evident, even while I uttered my empty phrases, that to all of us, except the General, the mystery had been blighted by some deadly chill in the very instant of its unfolding. The great man alone, with that power of ignoring the obvious, which had contributed so largely to his success, continued his running comments in his cheerful, dogmatic tone. Some twenty minutes later, when, after an indifferent inspection of the house on our part, and a vigilant one on the General's, we rolled back again in the barouche over the dusty road, he was still perfectly unaware that the surprise he had sprung had not been attended by a triumph of pleasure for us all.
"You're foolish, my dear, about those big poplars," he said a dozen times, while he sat staring, with an unseeing gaze, at the thin red line of the sunset over the corn-fields. "They ought to come down, and then you could see clean to the old Smith place, where I used to go as a boy. I learned to shoot there. Fell in love, too, when I wasn't more than twelve with Miss Lucy Smith, my first flame—pretty as a pink, all the boys were in love with her."
Sally's hand stole into mine under the muslin ruffles of her dress, and her eyes, when she looked at me, held a soft, deprecating expression, as if she were trying to understand, and could not, how she had hurt me. When at last we came to our own door and the General, after insisting again that the only improvement needed to the place was that the big poplars should come down, had driven serenely away in his big barouche, we ascended the steps in silence, and entered the sitting-room, which was filled with the pale gloom of twilight. While I lighted the lamp, she waited in the centre of the room, with the soft, deprecating expression still in her eyes.
"What is it, Ben?" she asked, facing the lamp as I turned; "did you mind my keeping the idea a secret? Why, I thought that would please you."
"It isn't that, Sally, it isn't that,—but—I've lost the money."
"Lost it, Ben?"
"I saw what I thought was a good chance to speculate—and I speculated."
"You speculated with the ten thousand dollars?"
"Yes."
"And lost it?"
"Yes."
For a moment her face was inscrutable.
"When did it happen?"
"I found out to-day that it was gone beyond hope of recovery."
"Then you haven't known it all along and kept it from me?"
"I was going to tell you as soon as I came up this afternoon, but the General was here."
"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 assistance.
"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 damned 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 gratitude counted stronger in the sex 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 gratitude was shot through with a less noble 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 passed on, I saw his slim, straight figure moving, with bent head, as if plunged in thought, under the electric light at the corner.