The Romance of a Plain Man

"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 passed, 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 competitors 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 class from which I had sprung. Courage I had never lost for an instant; the present might embarrass 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 institutions 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. Jessy had been affectionate and very pretty – she was a cold, small, blond woman, with a perfect face and the manner of an indifferent child – but she had been unable to wean me from the thought which returned to take royal possession as soon as the high pressure of my working day was relaxed. It controlled me utterly from the moment I put the question of the stock market aside; and it was driving me now, like the ghost of an unhappy lover, back for a passionate hour in the enchanted garden.

The house was half closed when I reached it, though the open shutters to the upper windows led me to believe that some of the rooms, at least, were tenanted. When I entered the gate and passed the stuccoed wing to the rear piazza, I saw that the terraces were blotted and ruined as if an invading army had tramped over them. The magnolias and laburnums, with the exception of a few lonely trees, had already fallen; the latticed arbours were slowly rotting away; and several hardy rose-bushes, blooming bravely in the overgrown squares, were the only survivals of the summer splendour that I remembered. Turning out of the path, I plucked one of these gallant roses, and found it pale and sickly, with a November blight at the heart. Only the great elms still arched their bared branches unchanged against a red sunset; and now as then the small yellow leaves fluttered slowly down, like wounded butterflies, to the narrow walks.

I had left the upper terrace and had descended the sunken green steps, when the dry rustle of leaves in the path fell on my ears, and turning a fallen summer house, I saw Sally approaching me through the broken maze of the box. A colour flamed in her face, and pausing in the leaf-strewn path, she looked up at me with shining and happy eyes.

"It has been so long since I saw you," she said, with her hand outstretched.

I took her hand, and turning we moved down the walk while I still held it in mine. Out of the blur of her figure, which swam in a mist, I saw only her shining and happy eyes.

"It has been a thousand years," I answered, "but I knew that they would pass."

"That they would pass?" she repeated.

"That they must pass. I have worked for that end every minute since I saw you. I have loved you, as you surely know," I blurted out, "every instant of my life, but I knew that I could offer you nothing until I could offer you something worthy of your acceptance."

Reaching out her hand, which she had withdrawn from mine, she caught several drifting elm leaves in her open palm.

"And what," she asked slowly, "do you consider to be worthy of my acceptance?"

"A name," I answered, "that you would be proud to bear. Not only the love of a man's soul and body, but the soul and body themselves after they have been tried and tested. Wealth, I know, would not count with you, and I believe, birth would not, even though you are a Bland – but I must have wealth, I must have honour, so that at least you will not appear to stoop. I must give you all that it lies in my power to achieve, or I must give you nothing."

"Wealth! honour!" she said, with a little laugh, "O Ben Starr! Ben Starr!"

"So that, at least, you will not appear to stoop," I repeated.

"I stoop to you?" she responded, and again she laughed.

"You know that I love you?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied, and lifted her eyes to mine, "I know that you love me."

"Beyond love I have nothing at the moment."

A light wind swept the leaves from her hand, and blew the ends of her white veil against my breast.

"And suppose," she demanded in a clear voice, "that love was all that I wanted?"

Her lashes did not tremble; but in her eyes, in her parted red lips, and in her whole swift and expectant figure, there was something noble and free, as if she were swept forward by the radiant purpose which shone in her look.

"Not my love – not yet – my darling," I said.

At the word her blush came.

"You say you have only yourself to give," she went on with an effort. "Is it possible that in the future – in any future – you could have more than yourself?"

"Not more love, Sally, not more love."

"Then more of what?"

"Of things that other men and women count worth the having!"

The sparkle returned to her eyes, and I watched the old childish archness play in her face.

"Do I understand that you are proposing to other men and women or to me, sir?" she enquired, above her muff, in the prim tone of Miss Mitty.

"To neither the one nor the other," I answered stubbornly, though I longed to kiss the mockery away from her curving lips. "When the time comes I shall return to you."

"And you are doing this for the sake of other people, not for me," she said. "I suppose, indeed, that it's Aunt Mitty and Aunt Matoaca you are putting before me. They would be flattered, I am sure, if they could only know of it – but they can't. As a matter of fact, they also put something before me, so I don't appear to come first with anybody. Aunt Mitty prefers her pride and Aunt Matoaca prefers her principles, and you prefer both – "

"I am only twenty-six," I returned. "In five years – in ten at most – I shall be far in the race – "

"And quite out of breath with the running," she observed, "by the time you turn and come back for me."

"I don't dare ask you to wait for me."

"As a matter of fact," she responded serenely, "I don't think I shall. I could never endure waiting."

Her calmness was like a dash of cold water into my face.

"Don't laugh at me whatever you do," I implored.

"I'm not laughing – it's far too serious," she retorted. "That scheme of yours," she flashed out suddenly, "is worthy of the great brain of the General."

"Now I'll stand anything but that!" I replied, and turned squarely on her; "Sally, do you love me?"

"Love a man who puts both his pride and his principles before me?"

"If you don't love me – and, of course you can't – why do you torment me?"

"It isn't torment, it's education. When next you start to propose to the lady of your choice, don't begin by telling her you are lovesick for the good opinion of her maiden aunts."

"Sally, Sally!" I cried joyfully. My hand went out to hers, and then as she turned away – my arm was about her, and the little fur hat with the bunch of violets was on my breast.

"O, Ben Starr, were you born blind?" she said with a sob.

"Sally, am I mad or do you love me?" I asked, and the next instant, bending over as she looked up, I kissed her parted lips.

For a minute she was silent, as if my kiss had drawn her strength through her tremulous red mouth. Her body quivered and seemed to melt in my arms – and then with a happy laugh, she yielded herself to my embrace.

"A little of both, Ben," she answered, "you are mad, I suppose, and so am I – and I love you."

"But how could you? When did you begin?"

"I could because I would, and there was no beginning. I was born that way."

"You meant you have cared for me, as I have for you – always?"

"Not always, perhaps – but – well, it started in the churchyard, I think, when I gave you Samuel. Then when I met you again it might have been just the way you look – for oh, Ben, did you ever discover that you are splendid to look at?"

"A magnificent animal," I retorted.

She blushed, recognising the phrase. "To tell the truth, though, it wasn't the way you look," she went on impulsively, "it was, I think, – I am quite sure, – the time you pushed that wheel up the hill. I adored you, Ben, at that moment. If you'd asked me to marry you on the spot I'd have responded, 'Yes, thank you, sir,' as one of my great-grandmothers did at the altar."

"And to think I didn't even know you were there. I'd forgotten it, but I remember now the General told me I made a spectacle of myself."

"Well, I always liked a spectacle, it's in my blood. I like a man, too, who does things as if he didn't care whether anybody was looking at him or not – and that's you, Ben."

"It's not my business to shatter your ideals," I answered, and the next minute, "O Sally, how is it to end?"

"That depends, doesn't it," she asked, "whether you want to marry me or my maiden aunts?"

"Do you mean that you will marry me?"

"I mean, Ben, that if you aren't so obliging as to marry me, I'll pine away and die a lovelorn death."

"Be serious, Sally."

"Could anything on earth be more serious than a lovelorn death?"

I would have caught her back to my breast, but eluding my arms, she stood poised like the fleeting-spirit of gaiety in the little path.

"Will you promise to marry me, Ben Starr?" she asked.

"I'll promise anything on earth," I answered.

"Not to talk any more about my stooping to a giant?"

"I won't talk about it, darling, I'll let you do it."

"And if you're poor you'll let me be poor too? And if you're rich you'll give me a share of the money?"

"Both – all."

"And you'll make a sacrifice for me – as the General said George wouldn't – whenever I happen particularly to want one?"

"A million of them – anything, everything."

She came a step nearer, and raised her smiling lips to mine.

"Anything – everything, Ben, together," she said.

Presently we walked back slowly, hand in hand, through the maze of box.

"Will you tell your aunts, or shall I, Sally?" I asked.

"We'll go to them together."

"Now, at this instant?"

"Now – at this instant," she agreed, "but I thought you were so patient?"

"Patient? I'm as patient as an engine on the Great South Midland."

"A minute ago you were prepared to wait ten years."

"Oh, ten years!" I echoed, as I followed her out of the enchanted garden.

At the corner the surrey was standing, and the face of old Shadrach, the negro driver, stared back at me, transfixed with amazement.

"Whar you gwine now, Miss Sally?" he demanded defiantly of his young mistress, as I took my place under the fur rug beside her.

"Home, Uncle Shadrach," she replied.

"Ain't I gwine drap de gent'man some whar on de way up?"

"No, Uncle Shadrach, home," – and for home we started merrily with a flick of the whip over the backs of the greys.

Sitting beside her for the first time in my life, I was conscious, as we drove through the familiar streets, only of an acute physical delight in her presence. As she turned toward me, her breath fanned my cheek, the touch of her arm on mine was a rapture, and when the edge of her white veil was blown into my face, I felt my blood rush to meet it. Never before had I been so confident, so strong, so assured of the future. Not the future alone, but the whole universe seemed to lie in the closed palm of my hand. I knew that I was plain, that I was rough beside the velvet softness of the woman who had promised to share my life; but this plainness, this roughness, no longer troubled me since she had found in it something of the power that had drawn her to me. My awkwardness had dropped from me in the revelation of my strength which she had brought. The odour of burning leaves floated up from the street, and I saw again her red shoes dancing over the sunken graves in the churchyard. Oh, those red shoes had danced into my life and would stay there forever!

CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH SALLY SPEAKS HER MIND

We crossed the threshold, which I had thought never to pass again, and entered the drawing-room, where a cedar log burned on the andirons. At either end of the low brass fender, Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca sat very erect, like two delicate silhouettes, the red light of the flames shining through their fine, almost transparent profiles. Beyond them, over the rosewood spinet, I saw their portrait, painted in fancy dress, with clasped hands under a garland of roses.

As we entered the room, they rose slightly from their chairs, and turned toward us with an expression of mild surprise on their faces. It was impossible, I knew, for their delicately moulded features to express any impulse more strongly.

"Dear aunties," began Sally, in a voice that was a caress, "I've brought Ben back with me because I met him in the garden on Church Hill – and – and – and he told me that he loved me."

"He told you that he loved you?" repeated Miss Mitty in a high voice, while Miss Matoaca sat speechless, with her unnaturally bright eyes on her niece's face.

Kneeling on the rug at their feet, Sally looked from one to the other with an appealing and tender glance.

"You brought him back because he told you that he loved you?" said Miss Mitty again, as if her closed mind had refused to admit the words she had uttered.

"Well, only partly because of that, Aunt Mitty," replied Sally bravely, "the rest was because – because I told him that I loved him."

For a moment there was a tense and unnatural silence in the midst of which I heard the sharp crackling of the fire and smelt the faint sweet smell of the burning cedar. The two aunts looked at each other over the kneeling girl, and it seemed to me that the long, narrow faces had grown suddenly pinched and old.

"I – I don't think we understood quite what you said, Sally dear," said Miss Matoaca, in a hesitating voice; and I felt sorry for her as she spoke – sorry for them both because the edifice of their beliefs and traditions, reared so patiently through the centuries by dead Fairfaxes and Blands, had crumbled about their ears.

"What she means, Miss Matoaca," I said gently, coming forward into the firelight, "is that I have asked her to marry me."

"To marry you – you – Ben Starr?" exclaimed Miss Mitty abruptly, rising from her chair, and then falling nervelessly back. "There is some mistake – not that I doubt," she added courteously, the generations of breeding overcoming her raw impulse of horror, "not that I doubt for a minute that you are an estimable and deserving character – General Bolingbroke tells me so and I trust his word. But Sally marry you! Why, your father – I beg your pardon for reminding you of it – your father was not even an educated man."

"No," I replied, "my father was not an educated man, but I am."

"That speaks very well for you, sir, I am sure – but how – how could my niece marry a man who – I apologise again for alluding to your origin – whose father was a stone-cutter – I have heard?"

"Yes, he was a stone-cutter, and I am sorry to say wasn't even a good one."

"I don't know that good or bad makes a difference, except, of course, as it affected his earning a livelihood. But the fact remains that he was a common workman and that no member of our family on either side has ever been even remotely connected with trade. Surely, you yourself, Mr. Starr, must be aware that my niece and you are not in the same walk of life. Do you not realise the impossibility of – of the connection you speak of?"

"I realised it so much," I answered, "that until I met her this afternoon I had determined to wait five – perhaps ten years before asking her to become my wife."

"Ten years? But what can ten years have to do with it? Families are not made in ten years, Mr. Starr, and how could that length of time alter the fact that your father was a person of no education and that you yourself are a self-made man?"

"I am not ashamed to offer her the man after he is made," I replied. "What I did not think worthy of her was the man in the making."

"But it is the man in the making that I want," said Sally, rising to her feet, and taking my hand in hers. "O Aunt Matoaca, I love him!"

The little lady to whom she appealed bent slowly forward in the firelight, her face, which had grown old and wan, looking up at us, as we stood there, hand in hand, on the rug.

"I am distressed for you, Sally," she said, "but when it becomes a question of honour, love must be sacrificed."

"Honour!" cried Sally, and there was a passionate anger in her voice, "but I do honour him." My hand was in hers, and she stooped and kissed it before turning to Miss Matoaca, who had drawn herself up, thin and straight as a blade, in her chair.

"You are right," I said, "to tell me that I am unworthy of your niece – for I am. I am plain and rough beside her, but, at least, I am honest. What I offer her is a man's heart, and a man's hand that has dealt cleanly and fairly with both men and women."

Until the words were uttered my pride had blinded me to my cruelty. Then I saw two bright red spots appear in Miss Matoaca's thin cheeks, and I asked myself in anger if the General or George Bolingbroke would have been guilty of so deep a thrust? Did she dream that I knew her story? And were those pathetic red spots the outward sign of a stab in her gentle bosom?

"There are many different kinds of merit, Mr. Starr," she returned, with a wistful dignity. "I do not undervalue that of character, but I do not think that even a good character can atone for the absence of family inheritance – of the qualities which come from refined birth and breeding. We have had the misfortune in our family of one experience of an ill-assorted and tragic marriage," she added.

"We must never forget poor Sarah's misery and ours, Sister Matoaca," remarked Miss Mitty, from the opposite side of the hearth; "and yet Harry Mickleborough's father was a most respectable man, and the teacher of Greek in a college."

All the pity went out of me, and I felt only a blind sense of irritation at the artificial values, the feminine lack of grasp, the ignorance of the true proportions of life. I grew suddenly hard, and something of this hardness passed into my voice when I spoke.

"I stand or fall by own worth and by that alone," I returned, "and your niece, if she marries me, will stand or fall as I do. I ask no favours, no allowances, even from her."

Withdrawing her hand from mine, Sally took a single step forward, and stood with her eyes on the faces that showed so starved and wan in the firelight.

"Don't you see – oh, can't you see," she asked, "that it is because of these very things that I love him? How can I separate his past from what he is to-day? How can I say that I would have this or that different – his birth, his childhood, his struggle – when all these have helped to make him the man I love? Who else have I ever known that could compare with him for a minute? You wanted me to marry George Bolingbroke, but what has he ever done to prove what he was worth?"

"Sally, Sally," said Miss Mitty, sternly, "he had no need to prove it. It was proved centuries before his birth. The Bolingbrokes proved themselves to their king before this was a country – "

"Well, I'm not his king," rejoined Sally, scornfully, "so it wasn't proved to me. I ask something more."

"More, Sally?"

"Yes, more, Aunt Mitty, a thousand times and ten thousand times. What do I care for a dead arm that fought for a dead king? Both are dust to-day, and I am alive. No, no, give me, not honour and loyalty that have been dead five hundred years, but truth and courage that I can turn to to-day, – not chivalric phrases that are mere empty sound, but honesty and a strong arm that I can lean on."

Miss Matoaca's head had dropped as if from weariness over her thin breast, which palpitated under the piece of old lace, like the breast of a wounded bird. Then, as the girl stopped and caught her breath sharply from sheer stress of feeling, the little lady looked up again and straightened herself with a gesture of pride.

"Do not make the mistake, Sally," she said, "of thinking that a humble birth means necessarily greater honesty than a high one. Generations of refinement are the best material for character-building, and you might as easily find the qualities you esteem in a gentleman of your own social position."

"I might, Aunt Matoaca; but, as a matter of fact, have I? Until you have seen a man fight can you know him? Is family tradition, after all, as good a school as the hard world? A life like Ben's does not always make a man good, I know, but it has made him so. If this were not true – if any one could prove to me that he had been false or cruel to any living creature – man, woman, or animal – I'd give him up to-day and not break my heart – "

It was true, I knew it as she spoke, and I could have knelt to her.

"You are blind, Sally, blind and rash as your mother before you," returned Miss Mitty.

"No, Aunt Mitty, it is you who are blind – who see by the old values that the world has long since outgrown – who think you can assign a place to a man and say to him, 'You belong there and cannot come out of it.' But, oh, Aunt Matoaca, surely you, who have sacrificed so much for what you believe to be right, – who have placed principle before any claims of blood, surely you will uphold me – "

"My child, my child," replied the poor lady, with a sob, "I placed principle first, but never emotion – never emotion."