The Romance of a Plain Man Part 36

"Well, she's perfect, and she always was and always will be," I returned.

"You're a great man, aren't you?" she asked suddenly, turning away from the table.

"Why, no. What in the world put that into your head?"

"Well, the General told Mr. Cottrel you were a genius, and Mr. Cottrel said you were the first genius he had ever heard of who measured six feet two in his stockings."

"Of course I'm not a genius. They were joking."

"You're rich anyway, and that's just as good."

I was about to make some sharp rejoinder, irritated by her insistence on the distinction of wealth, when the sound of Sally's step fell on my ears, and a moment later she came down the brilliantly lighted staircase, her long black lace train rippling behind her. As she moved among the lamps and azaleas, I thought I had never seen her more radiant--not even on the night of her first party when she wore the white rose in her wreath of plaits. Her hair was arranged to-night in the same simple fas.h.i.+on, her mouth was as vivid, her grey eyes held the same mingling of light with darkness. But there was a deeper serenity in her face, brought there by the untroubled happiness of her marriage, and her figure had grown fuller and n.o.bler, as if it had moulded itself to the larger and finer purposes of life.

"The house is charming, Jessy is lovely, and you, Ben, are magnificent,"

she said, her eyebrows arching merrily as she slipped her hand in my arm. "And it's a good dinner, too," she went on; "the terrapin is perfect. I sent into the country for the game, and the man from Was.h.i.+ngton came down with the decorations and the ices. Best of all, I made the salad myself, so be sure to eat it. We'll begin to be gay now, shan't we? Are you sure we have money enough for a ball?"

"We've money enough for anything that you want, Sally."

"Then I'll spend it--but oh! Ben, promise me you won't mention stocks to-night until the women have left the table."

"I'll promise you, and keep it, too. I don't believe I ever introduced a subject in my life to any woman but you."

"I'm glad, at least, there's one subject you didn't introduce to any other."

Then the door-bell rang, and we hurried into the drawing-room in time to receive Governor Blenner and the General, who arrived together.

"I almost got a fall on your pavement, Ben," said the General, "it's beginning to sleet. You'd better have some sawdust down."

It took me a few minutes to order the sawdust, and when I returned, the other guests were already in the room, and Sally was waiting to go in to dinner on the arm of Governor Blenner, a slim, nervous-looking man, with a long iron-grey mustache. I took in Mrs. Tyler, a handsome widow, with a young face and snow-white hair, and we were no sooner seated than she began to tell me a story she had heard about me that morning.

"Carry James told me she gave her little boy a penny and asked him what he meant to do with it. 'Ath Mithter Starr to thurn it into, a quarther,' he replied."

"Oh, he thinks that easy now, but he'll find out differently some day,"

I returned.

She nodded brightly, with the interested, animated manner of a woman who realises that the burden of conversation lies, not on the man's shoulders, but on hers. While she ate her soup I knew that her alert mind was working over the subject which she intended to introduce with the next course. From the other end of the table Sally's eyes were raised to mine over the basket of roses and lilies. Jessy was listening to George Bolingbroke, who was telling a story about the races, while his eyes rested on Sally, with a dumb, pained look that made me suddenly feel very sorry for him. I knew that he still loved her, but until I saw that look in his eyes I had never understood what the loss of her must have meant in his life. Suppose I had lost her, and he had won, and I had sat and stared at her across her own dinner table with my secret written in my eyes for her husband to read. A fierce sense of possession swept over me, and I felt angered because his longing gaze was on her flushed cheeks and bare shoulders.

"No, no wine. I've drunk my last gla.s.s of wine unless I may hope for it in heaven," I heard the General say; "a little Scotch whiskey now and then will see me safely to my grave."

"From champagne to Scotch whiskey was a flat fall, General," observed Mrs. Tyler, my sprightly neighbour.

"It's not so flat as the fall to Lithia water, though," retorted the General.

I was about to join vacantly in the laugh, when a sound in the doorway caused me to lift my eyes from my plate, and the next instant I sat paralysed by the figure that towered there over the palms and azaleas.

"Why, Benjy boy!" cried a voice, in a tone of joyous surprise, and while every head turned instantly in the direction of the words, the candles and the roses swam in a blur of colour before my eyes. Standing on the threshold, between two flowering azaleas, with a palm branch waving above his head, was President, my brother, who was a miner. Twenty years ago I had last seen him, and though he was rougher and older and greyer now, he had the same honest blue eyes and the same kind, sheepish face.

The clothes he wore were evidently those in which he dressed himself for church on Sunday, and they made him ten times more awkward, ten times more ill at ease, than he would have looked in his suit of jeans.

"Why, Benjy boy!" he burst out again; "and little Jessy!"

I sprang to my feet, while a hot wave swept over me at the thought that for a single dreadful instant I had been ashamed of my brother. Already I had pushed back my chair, but before I could move from my place, Sally had walked the length of the table, and stood, tall and queenly, between the flowering azaleas, with her hand outstretched. There was no shame in her face, no embarra.s.sment, no hesitation. Before I could speak she had turned and come back to us, with her arm through President's, and never in my eyes had she appeared so n.o.ble, so high-bred, so thoroughly a Bland and a Fairfax as she did at that moment.

"Governor, this is my brother, Mr. Starr," she said in her low, clear voice. "Ben has not seen him for twenty years, so if you will pardon him, he will go upstairs with him to his room."

As I went toward her my glance swept the table for Jessy, and I saw that she was sitting perfectly still and colourless, crumbling a small piece of bread, while her eyes clung to the basket of roses and lilies.

"Well, Benjy boy!" exclaimed President, too full for speech, "and little Jessy!"

In spite of his awkwardness and his Sunday clothes, he looked so happy, so uplifted by the sincerity of his affection above any false feeling of shame, that the tears sprang to my eyes as I clasped his hand.

The governor had risen to speak to him, the General had done likewise.

By their side Sally stood with a smile on her face and her hand on the table. She was a Bland, after all, and the racial instinct within her had risen to meet the crisis. They recognised it, I saw, and they, whose blood was as blue as hers, responded generously to the call. Not one had failed her! Then my eyes fell on Jessy, sitting cold and silent, while she crumbled her bit of bread.

CHAPTER XXII

THE MAN AND THE CLa.s.s

"I oughtn't to have done it, Benjy," said President, following me with diffidence under the waving palm branches and up the staircase.

"Nonsense, President," I answered; "I'm awfully glad you've come. Only if I'd known about it, I'd have met you at the station."

"No, I oughtn't to have done it, Benjy," he repeated humbly, standing in a dejected att.i.tude in the centre of the guest room next to Jessy's. He had entered nervously, as if he were stepping on gla.s.s, and when I motioned to a chair he shook his head and glanced uneasily at the delicate chintz covering.

"I'd better not sit down. I'm feared I'll hurt it."

"It's made to be sat in. You aren't going to stand up in the middle of the room all night, old fellow, are you?"

At this he appeared to hesitate, and a pathetic groping showed itself in his large, good-humoured face.

"You see, I've been down in the mines," he said, "an' anything so fancy makes my flesh crawl."

"I wish you'd give up that work. It's a shame to have you do it when I've got more money than I can find investments for."

"I'm a worker, Benjy, and I'll die a worker. Pa wa'nt a worker, and that's why he took to drink."

"Well, sit down now, and make yourself at home. I've got to go back downstairs, but I'll come up again the very minute that it's over."

Pus.h.i.+ng him, in spite of his stubborn, though humble, resistance, into the depths of the chintz-covered chair, I went hurriedly back to the dinner-table, and took my seat beside Mrs. Tyler, who remarked with a tact which won me completely:--

"Mrs. Starr has been telling us such interesting things about your brother. He has a very fine head."

"By George, I'm glad I shook his hand," said the General, in his loud, kindly way. "Bring him to see me, Ben, I like a worker."

The terrible minute in which I had sat there, paralysed by the shame of acknowledging him, was still searing my mind. As I met Sally's eyes over the roses and lilies, I wondered if she had seen my cowardliness as I had seen Jessy's, and been repelled by it? When the dinner was over, and the last guest had gone, I asked myself the question again while I went upstairs to bring my brother from his retirement. As I opened the door, he started up from the chair in which I had placed him, and began rubbing his eyes as he followed me timidly out of the room. At the table Sally seated herself opposite to him, and talked in her simple, kindly manner while he ate his dinner.