The Romance of a Plain Man Part 43

"If you come back to the road, I'll find a place for you--but it won't be like being a bank president, you know."

"Well, when the time comes, I'll let you know," I added, when the buggy stopped before my door, and I handed him the reins.

"Listen to me, my boy," he called back, as he drove off and I went up the brown stone steps, "and take a julep."

But the support I needed was not that of whiskey, and though I swallowed a dozen juleps, the thought of Sally's face when I broke the news would suffer no blessed obscurity.

"Shall I tell her now, or after dinner?" I asked, while I drew out my latch-key; and then when she met me at the head of the staircase, with her s.h.i.+ning eyes, I grew cowardly again, and said, "Not now--not now.

To-night I will tell her."

At night, when we sat opposite to each other, with a silver bowl of jonquils between us, she began talking idly about the marriage of Bonny Page, inspired, I felt, by a valiant determination to save the situation in the eyes of the servants at least. The small yellow candle shades, made to resemble flowers, shone like suns in a mist before my eyes; and all the time that my thoughts worked over the approaching hour, I heard, like a m.u.f.fled undertone, the soft, regular footfalls of old Esdras, the butler, on the velvet carpet.

"I'll tell her after the servants have gone, and the house is quiet--when she has taken off her dinner gown--when she may turn on her pillow and cry it out. I'll say simply, 'Sally, I am ruined. I haven't a penny left of my own. Even the horses and the carriages and the furniture are not mine!' No, that is a brutal way. It will be better to put it like this"--"What did you say, dear?" I asked, speaking aloud.

"Only that Bonny Page is to have six bridesmaids, but the wedding will be quiet, because they have lost money."

"They've lost money?"

"Everybody has lost money--everybody, the General says. Ben, do you know," she added, "I've never cared truly about money in my heart."

In some vague woman's way she meant it, I suppose, yet as I looked at her, where she sat beyond the bowl of jonquils, in one of her old Paris gowns, which she had told me she was wearing out, I broke into a short, mirthless laugh. She held her head high, with its wreath of plaits that made a charming frame for her arched black eyebrows and her full red mouth. On her bare throat, round and white as a marble column, there was an old-fas.h.i.+oned necklace of wrought gold, which had belonged to some ancestress, who was doubtless the belle and beauty of her generation.

Was it possible to picture her in a common gown, with her sleeves rolled up and the perplexed and anxious look that poverty brings in her eyes?

For the first time in my life I was afraid to face the moment before me.

The roast was removed, the dessert served, and played with in silence.

The footfalls of old Esdras, the butler, sounded softer on the carpet, as he carried away the untasted pudding and brought coffee and an apricot brandy, which he placed before me with a persuasive air. I lit a cigar at the flame of the little silver lamp he offered me, drank my coffee hurriedly, and rose from the table.

"Are you going to work, Ben?" asked Sally, following me to the door of the library.

"Yes, I am going to work."

Without a word she raised her lips to mine, and when I had kissed her, she turned slowly away, and went up the staircase, with the branching lights in the hall s.h.i.+ning upon her head.

I closed the door, lowered the wick of the oil lamp on my desk, and began walking up and down the length of the room, between the black oak bookcases filled with rows of calf-bound volumes. I tried to think, but between my thoughts and myself there obtruded always, like some small, malignant devil, the face of the old woman on the pavement before the bank, with her distorted and twisted mouth. "This will have to go--everything will have to go--when I've sold every last stick I have in the world, I shall still owe a debt of some cool hundreds of thousands. I'll pay that, too, some day. Of course, of course, but when?

Meanwhile, we've got to live somewhere, somehow. There's the child, too--and there's Sally. I always said I'd only money to give her, and now I haven't that. We'll have to go into some cheap place, and I'll begin over again, with the disadvantages of a failure behind me, and a burden of debt on my shoulders. She's got to know--I've got to tell her.

Confound that old woman! Why can't I keep her out of my thoughts?"

The hours went by, and still I walked up and down between the black oak bookcases, driven by some demon of torture to follow the same line in the Turkish rug, to turn always at the same point, to measure always the same number of steps.

"Well, she got her money--they all got their money," I said at last. "I am the only one who is ruined--no, not the only one--there is Sally and there is the child. I'd feel easier," I added, echoing the words of the old woman aloud, "I'd feel easier if I were the only one."

A clock somewhere in the city struck the hour of midnight, and while the sound was still in the air, the door opened softly and Sally came into the room. She had slipped on a wrapper over her nightdress, and her hair, flattened and warmed by the pillow, hung in a single braid over her bosom. There were deep circles under her eyes, which shone the more brilliantly because of the heavy shadows.

"What is the matter, Ben? Why don't you come upstairs?"

"I couldn't sleep--I am thinking," I answered, almost roughly, oppressed by my weight of misery.

"Would you rather be alone? Shall I go away again?"

"Yes, I'd rather be alone."

She went silently to the door, stood there a minute, and then ran back with her arms outstretched.

"Oh, Ben, Ben, why are you so hard? Why are you so cruel?"

"Cruel? Hard? To you, Sally?"

"You treat me as if--as if I'd married you for your money and you've made me hate and despise it. I wish--I almost wish we hadn't a penny."

I laughed the bitter, mirthless laugh that had broken from me at dinner.

"As a matter of fact we haven't--not a single penny that we can honestly call our own."

She drew back instantly, her head held high under the branching electric jet in the ceiling.

"Well, I'm glad of it," she responded defiantly.

"You don't in the least understand what it means, Sally. It isn't merely giving up a few luxuries, it is actually going without the necessities.

It is practically beginning again."

"I am glad of it," she repeated, and there was no regret in her voice.

"Oh, can't you understand?"

"Tell me and I will try."

"I've lost everything. I'm ruined."

"There is nothing left?"

"There is honour," I said bitterly, "a couple of hundred thousand dollars of debt, and a little West Virginia railroad too poor to go bankrupt."

"Then we must start from the very bottom?"

"From the very bottom. Nothing that you are likely to imagine can be worse than the facts--and I've brought you to it."

Something that was like a sob burst from me, and turning away, I flung myself into the chair on the hearth-rug.

"Can't you think of anything that would be worse?" she asked quietly.

I shook my head, "The worst thing about it is that I've brought you to it."

"Wouldn't it be worse," she went on in the same level voice, "if you had lost me?"

"Lost you!" I cried, and my arms were open at the thought.

"I'm glad, I'm glad." With the words she was on her knees at my side, and her mouth touched my cheek. "I knew it wasn't the worst, Ben,--I knew you'd rather give up the money than give up me. Ah, can't you see--can't you see, that the worst can't come to us while we are still together?"