"Pour his wine, Ben," she said, dismissing the butler, "there are too many frivolities, aren"t there? I like a clear s.p.a.ce, too."
Turning toward him she pushed gently away the confusing decorations, and removed the useless number of forks from beside his plate. If the way he ate his soup and drank his wine annoyed her, there was no hint of it in her kind eyes and her untroubled smile. She, who was sensitive to the point of delicacy, I knew, watched him crumble his bread into his green turtle, and gulp down his sherry, with a glance which apparently was oblivious of the thing at which it looked. Jessy shrank gradually away, confessing presently that she had a headache and would like to go upstairs to bed; and when she kissed President"s cheek, I saw aversion written in every line of her shrinking figure. Yet opposite to him sat Sally, who was a Bland and a Fairfax, and not a tremor, not the flicker of an eyelash, disturbed her friendly and charming expression. What was the secret of that exquisite patience, that perfect courtesy, which was confirmed by the heart, not by the lips? Did the hidden cause of it lie in the fact that it was not a manner, after all, but the very essence of a character, whose ruling spirit was exhaustless sympathy?
"I"ve told Benjy, ma"am," said President, selecting the largest fork by some instinct for appropriateness, "that I know I oughtn"t to have done it."
"To have done what?" repeated Sally kindly.
"That I oughtn"t to have come in on a party like that dressed as I am, and I so plain and uneddicated."
"You mustn"t worry," she answered, bending forward in all the queenliness of her braided wreath and her bare shoulders, "you mustn"t worry--not for a minute. It was natural that you should come to your brother at once, and, of course, we want you to stay with us."
I had never seen her fail when social intuition guided her, and she did not fail now. He glanced down at his clothes in a pleased, yet hesitating, manner.
"These did very well on Sunday in Pocahontas," he said, "but somehow they don"t seem to suit here; I reckon so many flowers and lights kind of dazzle my eyes."
"They do perfectly well," answered Sally, speaking in a firm, direct way as if she were talking to a child; "but if you would feel more comfortable in some of Ben"s clothes, he has any number of them at your service. He is about your height, is he not?"
"To think of little Benjy growin" so tall," he remarked with a kind of ecstasy, and when we went into the library for a smoke, he insisted upon measuring heights with me against the ledge of the door. Then, alone with me and the cheerful crackling of the log fire, his embarra.s.sment disappeared, and he began to ask a mult.i.tude of eager questions about myself and Jessy and my marriage.
"And so pa died," he remarked sadly, between the long whiffs of his pipe.
"I"m not sure it wasn"t the best thing he ever did," I responded.
"Well, you see, Benjy, he wa"nt a worker, and when a man ain"t a worker there"s mighty little to stand between him and drink. Now, ma, she was a worker."
"And we got it from her. That"s why we hate to be idle, I suppose."
"Did it ever strike you, Benjy," he enquired solemnly, after a minute, "that in the marriage of ma and pa the breeches were on the wrong one of "em? Pa wa"nt much of a man, but he would have made a female that we could have been proud of. With all the good working qualities, we never could be proud of ma when we considered her as a female."
"Well, I don"t know, but I think she was the best we ever had."
"We are proud of Jessy," he pursued reflectively.
"Yes, we are proud of Jessy," I repeated, and as I uttered the words, I remembered her beautiful blighted look, while she sat cold and silent, crumbling her bit of bread.
"And we are proud of you, Benjy," he added, "but you ain"t any particular reason to be proud of me. You can"t be proud of a man that ain"t had an eddication."
"Well, the education doesn"t make the man, you know."
"It does a good deal towards it. The stuffing goes a long way with the goose, as poor ma used to say. Do you ever think what ma would have been if she"d had an eddication? An eddication and breeches would have made a general of her. It must take a powerful lot of patience to stand being born a female."
He took a wad of tobacco from his pocket, eyed it timidly, and after glancing at the tiled hearth, put it back again.
"You know what I would do if I were a rich man, Benjy?" he said; "I"d buy a railroad."
"You"d have to be a very rich man, indeed, to do that."
"It"s a little dead-beat road, the West Virginia and Wyanoke. I overheard two gentlemen talking about it yesterday in Pocahontas, and one of "em had been down to look at those worked-out coal fields at Wyanoke. "If I wa"nt in as many schemes as I could float, I"d buy up a control of that road," said the one who had been there, "you mark my words, there"s better coal in those fields than has ever come out of "em." They called him Huntley, and he said he"d been down with an expert."
"Huntley?" I caught at the name, for he was one of the shrewdest promoters in the South. "If he thinks that, why didn"t he get control of the road himself?"
"The other wanted him to. He said the time would come when they tapped the coal fields that the Great South Midland and Atlantic would want the little road as a feeder."
"So he believed the Wyanoke coal fields weren"t worked out, eh?"
"He said they wa"nt even developed. You see it was all a secret, and they didn"t pay any attention to me, because I was just a common miner."
"And couldn"t buy a railroad. Well, President, if it comes to anything, you shall have your share. Meanwhile, I"ll run out to Wyanoke and look around."
With the idea still in my mind, I went into the General"s office next day, and told him that I had decided to accept the presidency of the Union Bank.
"Well, I"m sorry to lose you, Ben. Perhaps you"ll come back to the road in another capacity when I am dead. It will be a bigger road then. We"re buying up the Tennessee and Carolina, you know."
"It"s a great road you"ve made, General, and I like to serve it. By the way, I"m going to West Virginia in a day or two to have a look at the West Virginia and Wyanoke. What do you know of the coal fields at Wyanoke?"
"No "count ones. I wouldn"t meddle with that little road if I were you.
It will go bankrupt presently, and then we"ll buy it, I suppose, at our own price. It runs through scrub land populated by old field pines. How is that miner brother of yours, Ben? I saw Sally at the theatre with him. You"ve got a jewel, my boy, there"s no doubt of that. When I looked at her sailing down the room on his arm last night, by George, I wished I was forty years younger and married to her myself."
Some hours later I repeated his remark to Sally, when I went home at dusk and found her sitting before a wood fire in her bedroom, with her hat and coat on, just as she had dropped there after a drive with President.
"Well, I wouldn"t have the General at any age. You needn"t be jealous, Ben," she responded. "I"m too much like Aunt Matoaca."
"He always said you were," I retorted, "but, oh, Sally, you are an angel! When I saw you rise at dinner last night, I wanted to squeeze you in my arms and kiss you before them all."
The little scar by her mouth dimpled with the old childish expression of archness.
"Suppose you do it now, sir," she rejoined, with the primness of Miss Mitty, and a little later, "What else was there to do but rise, you absurd boy? Poor mamma used to tell me that grandpapa always said to her, "When in doubt choose the kindest way.""
"And yet he disinherited his favourite daughter."
"Which only proves, my dear, how much easier it is to make a proverb than to practise it."
"Do you know, Sally," I began falteringly, after a minute, "there is something I ought to tell you, and that is, that when I looked up at the table last night and saw President in the doorway, my first feeling was one of shame."
She rubbed her cheek softly against my sleeve.
"Shall I confess something just as dreadful?" she asked. "When I looked up and saw him standing there my first feeling was exactly the same."
"Sally, I am so thankful."
"You wicked creature, to want me to be as bad as yourself."
"It couldn"t have lasted with you but a second."
"It didn"t, but a second is an hour in the mind of a sn.o.b."
"Well, we were both sn.o.bs together, and that"s some comfort, anyway."
For the three days that President remained with us he wore my clothes, in which he looked more than ever like a miner attired for church, and carried himself with a resigned and humble manner.