Southern Lights and Shadows Part 3

"You don't mean to say this is permanent? Paralyzed? I? Oh, absurd!" Awful things happened to other people, of course--scandal, death--but to one's self--"Oh, it doesn't sound true! It can't be true. Paralyzed? _I_?"

And Bessie wondered why this had been sent on _her_.

The explanation was. .h.i.t on long afterward, when in one of his campaign stories Guy mentioned a fall from his horse, with his spine against a rock, that had laid him unconscious for twenty-two hours.

And so the war, which had been responsible for their starting together with only a past and a future, was responsible for their having shortly only a past. Guy was not allowed his ten years.

Though he had now less actual pain, the shock seemed to jar the foundations of his life, and the sharp change in the habits of an active and vigorous body seemed to wreck his whole system. For months and months and months he seemed only a bundle of exposed nerves--that is, where he had any movement or sensation at all.

Now a past, however escutcheoned and fame-enrolled, is even more starvation diet than a future of affection and self-confidence. No help was to be had from either of their homes; it was the day of self-help for all.

Bessie wondered why this had been sent on _her_, but she took a couple of boarders at once, she sold sponge-cake and beaten biscuit, she got up cla.s.ses in bread-making. And Guy stopped her busy pa.s.sing to draw her hand to his lips, or watched her with dumb eyes.

Several of her friends, after trying her sewing-machine, then still something of a novelty, ordered duplicates. Guy suggested as a joke that she charge the makers a commission.

"The idea of trading on friends.h.i.+p?" Bessie laughed.

"Oh, I don't know," Guy reflected, more seriously. "How about these boarders, then? That's trading on hospitality."

It was one of those minute flashes of illumination that, multiplied and collected, become the glow of a new light, the signal of a revolution. The country was full of them in those days. The old codes were melting in the heat of change. Standards were fluid. Personally, it ended in Bessie's selling machines, first in her town, then in neighboring ones.

In the restlessness that youth thinks is aspiration for the ideal, particularly for the ideal love, is a large element of craving for place and interest. After her marriage, at least, Bessie might have had enough of both; but the obvious purpose was too limited to appeal to her. Now two appet.i.tes and the four seasons supplied motive enough for industry. There was nothing magnificent in this manifest destiny, but it had the advantage of being imperative and constant. It was no small tax on her acquired delicacy, but it gave less time for hunting symptoms. It did not answer the _Whence, Whither, and Why;_ it pointedly changed the subject. Her work began to carry her out of herself.

"Bibi dear, what a sorry end to all my promises!"

She had been thinking just that herself with a sense of injury and imposition; and she was used all her life to having people see everything as she saw it, from her side only. But Guy had just turned over to his few creditors the hole in the ground into which so far most of his work had gone. "Bibi dear, what a sorry end to all my plans!" was what she expected him to say. And what he did say and what he didn't, met surprised in her mind and surveyed each other.

"Oh, Guy!" she deprecated, suddenly ashamed. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder why this had been sent on _him_. With a rush of remorseful sympathy and appreciation, she slipped down beside his chair. "My poor old boy!"

He clung to her like a drowning man--Guy, who, after the first single cry at the blow, had been so self-contained (or self-repressed?) through it all!

She remembered that she had omitted a good many things lately.

"You're tired to-day," he said.

"Yes, I am." She caught at it hurriedly with apologetic self-defence. "I'm pretty constantly tired lately. And this morning Mrs. Grey was so trying.

She doesn't understand her machine, and she doesn't understand business, and she was _too_ silly and stupid. I don't wonder you men laugh at us and don't want us in _your_ affairs!"

"It's all hard on you, Bibi." There was a lump in his voice. It was the first time he had been able to speak of it.

"Yes;" her own throat was so strained that for a moment she could not go on. "But," it struck her again, "I don't suppose an unbiased observer would think it exactly festive for you."

And, to be sure, when one came to think of it, how, pray, was he to blame?

From that day there began to be more than necessity to her work, and more than work to carry her out of herself.

In the present of commercial femininity we have two types--one, the business man; the other, an individual without gender, impersonal, capable.

She never does anything ill-bred, certainly, but one no more thinks of specifying that she is a lady than that her hair is black; it isn't the point.

Mrs. Osbourne, however, was always first of all a lady. With her, men kept their hats off and their coats on, and had an inclination to soften business with bows, and bargains with figures of speech. She was at once so patrician and so gracious that women felt it a kind of social function to deal with her. The drawl of the light voice with its rising inflection was only gently plaintive. The pretty way was winning, and rather pathetic in her position; it drifted about her an aroma of story, and that had its own appeal. The unvarying black of dress and bonnet, with touches of white at neck and wrist, was refined, and made her rosy plumpness look sweeter. It was all an uninventoried part of her stock in trade. And she came to take the same satisfaction in returns in success and cash that she had taken as a girl in results in valentines and cotillion favors.

Mrs. Osbourne had all the traditions of her cla.s.s and generation. She let her distaste of the situation be known. If it had been possible, she would have concealed it like a scandal. As it was, with very proud apology, she made the necessity of her case understood: her object was bread and b.u.t.ter, not any of these new Woman's Rights--unwomanly, bourgeoise!

Nevertheless, it was not only true that it suited her to be doing something with some point and result, but that the life of action and influence among people suited her. The work came to interest her for itself as well as for its object; that interest was a factor in her success; and the success again both stimulated and further equipped her.

As she got into training and over the first sore muscles of mind and body, work began to strengthen her. The nerves and small ailments grew secondary, were overlooked, actually lessened. There need be nothing esoteric in saying that a vital interest in life is as essential to health as to happiness. One need consider only the practical and physical effects of interest and self-forgetfulness, serenity and self-resource.

Sometimes her increasing trade took her away for two or three days, as far as Louisville or Cincinnati. The thought of Guy followed her, a sweet pain.

She found herself hurrying back to her bright prisoner, and because of both conditions the marvel of that brightness grew on her, together with certain embarra.s.sed comparisons. More than anything else, she admired his strength where she had been weak.

His brightness seemed to her the most pathetic thing about him; it was so sorry. It was indeed the epitome of his tragedy. To be as un.o.btrusive as possible, and, when necessarily in evidence, as pleasant as possible, was the role he had a.s.signed himself. It was the one thing he could do, the only thing he could do for her.

Doubtless the very controlling of the nervousness helped it. Moreover, his revolting organization was gradually adapting itself somewhat to the new conditions. Sensitive and uncertain tendrils of vitality began to creep out from the roots of a blighted vigor.

Bessie, increasingly perceptive, began to suspect that what she saw was the brightness after the storm. She wondered what his long solitary hours were like when she was away. What must they be, with him helpless, disappointed, lonely, liable to maddening attacks of nerves? But he a.s.sured her that he was perfectly comfortable; Mammy Dinah was faithful and competent; and he was really making headway with the German and French that he had taken up because he could put them down as need was, and because--they might come in, in some way, some time. "In heaven?" Bessie wondered secretly, but, enlightened by her own experience, saw the advantage of his being entertained.

"You're too much alone," she said, feeling for the trouble. "And so am I,"

she added, thoughtfully. She should have noticed his eyes at that last. He had developed a sort of controlled voracity for endearment, but he never asked for it. In the old days he had taken his own masterfully, with no doubts. Now he waited. He did not starve. She cajoled him and coaxed his appet.i.te and patted the pillows, and made pretty, laughing eyes at him and fate quite in her habitual manner. Her touch and tone of affection had never been so free. But in that very fact he found another sting.

"The better I do on the road, the more they keep me out," she was saying.

"We can't go on this way. I've been thinking lately--Could you bear to go North, Guy, and to live in a city, among strangers? Perhaps at headquarters there might be an opening for me that would let me settle down."

"What! Cincinnati! Is there any such chance?"

"You'd _like_ it? Why on earth--Are you so bored here?"

"Oh, Bibi, have you never thought of it? In a city there'd be some chance of something I could do!"

"You? Oh, Guy!" After she had accepted the care of him, and that so pleasantly, he wasn't satisfied! "Is there anything you lack here?" She was hurt.

It was replaying the old parts reversed. Once _he_ had grieved that he could not give her enough to content her.

"A--h--" He turned his head away and flung an arm up over his eyes.

She understood only that he was suffering. "But, Guy, there's nothing you could do, possibly. It's not to be expected. Have I complained?" She fell back on the kindly imbecility of the nurse. "Now you're not to worry about that, at least until you're better--"

"Better?" He forgot the lines in which he had schooled himself. The man overrode the amateur actor. "That's not the thing to hope for. Why couldn't it have killed me--that first fall?" ("My dear, my dear!" she stammered.) "There would have been some satisfaction in getting out of the way, and that in decent fas.h.i.+on; like a charge of powder, not like a rubbish-heap. I can't accept it of you, Bibi. I'm enraged for you. I can't be grateful. I'm ashamed."

She understood now.

What could she say? A dozen things, and she did; things about as satisfying as theology at the grave. He did not answer nor respond. When he relaxed at last it was simply to her arms around him, his head on her bosom, her wordless notes of tenderness and consolation.

He was suffering, and chiefly for her, and what a fighter he was! Who but he would ever have thought of _his_ doing anything?

So there might be cases in which it was really more helpful and generous not to do things for people, but to let them do for themselves. She couldn't fancy his doing enough to amount to anything. He oughtn't to! But if it would make him any happier he should have his make-believe--yes, and without knowing it was make-believe. Doing things that were of no value to any one was so disheartening. She knew. Like perfunctory exercise for your health.

Her own business in Cincinnati proved so brief as to take her breath. His was more difficult. The plough was still mightier than either sword or pen.

Few markets were open to an inactive man whose hours must be short and irregular, and whose chief qualifications seemed to be a valiant spirit and a store of reminiscences, in a time when reminiscences were as easy to get as advice.